#racism is stupid

[isawthismeme]

[thesesongskillfascists]

Family Tree - TV on the Radio

I can’t remember if it was Brian Eno or John Cage (or both, for that matter), who stated that they loved to listen to and think about the sound a note makes as it fades away, the timbre of a fading reverb, the diminishing returns of an echo.

The beginnings notes of TV on the Radio’s harrowing and beautiful “Family Tree” evoke these faded notes, like memories of sound. Which is appropriate as the song is about how the vestiges and echoes of the bigotry of generations past are still felt today; ideas that should have died out, or never been had, have permeated into the roots of our cultural landscape and, thus, cannot die out. Like the piano’s fading echoed notes at the onset of the track, fading away but establishing the mood for the entirety of the structure, so do the ideas of the past:

“Were laying in the shadow of your family tree Your haunted heart and me Brought down by an old idea whose time has come... Pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep it young”

TV On the Radio were/are a band that I didn’t get exposed to until much later than I should have. They were always on the periphery of what I was listening to, and always being touted by writers, musicians, and friends whose tastes and opinions I respected. There was just too much other stuff to listen to: some music falls through the cracks. I wish I had heeded those notices and embraced them when they were at their peak.

“Family Tree” is one of the most achingly beautiful and heartbreaking songs I’ve ever heard. The music and harmonies evoking our emotions, and the lyrics breaking down the insidiousness, evil and stupidity or any form of bigotry (race, sexuality, gender, etc.)

The songs starts with one suitor calling up to their beloved, Anda, asking her to come to the window and run away to get married with the narrator. In this image it evokes a Romeo and Juliet motif, star-crossed lovers kept apart by the outdated ideas of their family and corrupted society. But, whereas R&J focuses on a more personal story about two warring, wealthy families, “Family Tree” attacks ideas on a more societal and political level. Hell, interracial marriage wasn’t legalized until the mid 1960s in the US, and same-sex marriage has only been legal for roughly 10 years, and regressive, religious bigots are trying very hard to reverse both of those decisions. 

Lead singer Tunde Adebimpe has stated this explicitly in an interview with the AV Club (the link to said interview is now broken and returns a 404 error):

AVC: "Family Tree" seems particularly poignant. What inspired that song? TA: I've been in situations, and known people in situations, where someone's pure affection was unfortunately affected by outside sources. The terrain of a person's heart really isn't under the jurisdiction of anybody but that person, and in that song, it's an older generation condemning a relationship between two people for reasons that they probably had to deal with when they were younger. Like, "Well, when I was your age, I fell in love with so-and-so, and that was nothing but hell for me…" The "old idea" in the lyrics is bigotry, which could relate to race, to gender, to sexuality… People have their reasons for doing that, but it makes for such a waste of what could be a really short life.

Anda, we get the impression, has a very difficult time deciding to so, believing that if she were it would mean betraying what her family believes and wants her to do. Even if her family’s beliefs are based on backwards societal notions: “It’s shaking off halos And the memory of our sacred so and so” This line shows that we tend to idolize those elders whom we love, ignoring their ideas, and not wanting to “betray” or “disappoint” them. How many of the readers have been reprimanded by parental figures or family members for something they did with the reprimanding figure evoking “if so-and-so could see you, they would be so ashamed,” using your love of that figure to shame your behavior (when sometimes your behavior isn’t what needs scolding.) These lines are asking us to look at the beliefs of those ancestors we hold in esteem and realize that those were bad ideas, and it’s time to shake those off, to see them not in halos but as flawed people whose ideas we can get rid of.

This theme continues in the following verse:

“Oh, take my hand sweet Complete your release, unbury your feet And married we'll be Alone in receiving ours is a feeling, not that they would see”

Release yourself from your family’s and society’s belief, when you know your feelings and heart isn’t wrong.

The end lyrics of this verse (repeated later in a slight variation), I haven’t been able to accurately decipher:

“Down where your cradle escaped the sea And your raven haired mama caught told you so's.”

I know that the cradle escaping the sea line is a reference to Greek mythology and Christian mythology, with both Perseus being placed in a cradle and sent to sea so her could survive the bigotry and persecution of his time; and Moses in the Christian Bible the same. And with the call back later in the song of the silver-haried mama, I know that this occurs in an earlier time. But I can’t tell if the mother had similar experience as Anda and was in love with someone “she shouldn’t have been with,” or if it’s a projected image of the narrator of the mother being scolded by her peers, them telling mama “I told you so... that blah-blah was no good” and other such rubbish ideas. It could be both interpretations are valid. Based on Adebimpe’s interview with the AV Club, I’m going with the first interpretation.

Which brings us to the chorus, which distinguishes the song from lesser Romeo & Juliet comparisons, with the evocation of hangings and lynchings, disturbing acts of evil that have occurred in our own recent history. (I’m talking directly to you, Mississippi, Alabama, Deep South)

“We're hanging in the shadow of your family tree Your haunted heart and me Brought down by an old idea whose time has come And in the shadow of the gallows of your family tree There's a hundred hearts or three Pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep it young”

The family tree is the central metaphor in this song and in the chorus, that most of our ideas and beliefs come from our family, but we do have the choice to break free of those ideas. The family tree in this song evokes both a literal tree and the written family tree traditionally used in genealogy. In either metaphor, the ideas and regressive bigotry is inherited and taught, and originates from the roots of the tree. And if we take that metaphor even further to our present society, the roots are what we, as American citizens, have been taught by our collective pasts, and it’s time to sever those roots, kill off those ideas of evil. We don’t have to adhere to traditions for the sake of traditions, or adhere to beliefs because our ancestors or family did. The ending of the song ends with a variation of the chorus, evoking Psalm 23:4 “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” “And now we're gathered in the shadow of your family tree In halted harmony Brought down by an old idea whose time has come And in the shadow of the valley of your family tree There's a hundred hearts or three Pumping blood to the roots of evil to keep us young”

That verse from the Christian Bible is usually evoked to those to stay strong in the faces of evil, that they are protected by a power greater than them. Bigots will often justify their actions and beliefs by quoting Scripture. Adebimpe, by using this verse, but not quoting it specifically, is turning their justifications back on them, showing that the persecuted can use Scriptural lessons, too, so maybe, the bigotry isn’t within the Christian mythology, but by those using it for their own evil beliefs. Maybe the evil, bigoted beliefs aren’t justified after all.

The music within the song slowly builds to a crescendo, as well. The beginning with the fading harmonics mentioned at the start of this entry, and slowly building throughout, with the second verse introducing strings, albeit with just some sustained notes. In the bridge, we can hear the occasional electronic pulse of percussion, but not much, it’s not really a beat, just some added texture.  But the final evocation of the chorus (where some interpreters believe the lovers are being buried--perhaps having been murdered-- where the family is gathering in the shadow of the family tree), we hear a percussive beat with some allegretto strings, a forward momentum, a march of sorts, the music itself ending with an upbeat tempo. 

Given the previous sadness and heartbreaking story, we aren’t led to believe that the narrator and Anda’s love story ended on a positive note. The ending up-tempo music is itself a reminder and notice to the listener to keep pushing and moving and striving for the better world we want, for the severing of the roots of evil, to end our old beliefs that we inherit from our families. 

[jamaicaismyplayground]

Racism is so stupid. Did you expect your race to be the only one on this tiny planet?

[disgruntledseagull]

I don't think you guys understand per capita either.

There are 100 people and 10 of them are blue and the other 90 are red.

One red man and one blue man each commit an illegal act.

The red man is jailed for a decade but the blue man is given leniency and let out in a year.

The same blue man commits an illegal act as soon as they release him.

He is let out in a year.

This goes on the same way until the red man is let out of jail.

If you read the statistics on this without any details attached you will think that blue men commit 10x the crimes as red men per capita, when in reality the fact is that blue men are given 10x the opportunity to commit crimes.

[themeanstoanend]

[ratbastarddotfuck]

if you're a white person taking pleasure in the idea that Trump voters of colour are experiencing racist violence from white trumpers because "they got what's coming to them" I don't think you're anti-racist at all, I think you were just waiting for an acceptable target, and you're also fucking weird.

Bad Person Deserves Punishment For Their Sins give me a fucking break and get yourself out of the fucking catholic church. you're all prison abolitionists until you see someone you don't like.

[disgruntledseagull]

"markedly fewer children from the non-western rural sites"

In a desert region(no limpid pools of natural standing water to gaze into)

where the fuck are the commonly found reflective surfaces for these tiny children to use to become aware of their own reflection's details exactly?

This is rural Kenya.

Does this look like the sort of place where a 1-5 year old gets daily exposure to a clean mirror while having a clean face????

"Oh they didn't notice the mark on their faces they must be retarded"

No you are retarded if you can't see how these conditions would make anyone a bit less aware of their own face than they would have been otherwise.

If you had only seen your clean face a double handful of times in your short five years you wouldn't really know what the fuck it looked like either.

Oh and about the Fijian kids I mean it says right there they are taught to obey and not question.

So an adult puts a mark on their face and they don't remove it they just freeze.

I mean yeah they have been taught to obey adults without question.

Of course they just freeze :/

[alwaysbewoke]

[tra-archive]

When will trans people stop comparing their issues to racial segregation and slavery?? Disgusting af

[edlucavalden]

I love kabumisu, but yall focus on mithrun's development too much. What about kabru. What about the things mithrun helps kabru with. What about the things kabru realizes about himself through his interactions with mithrun. He people pleases so hard he accidentally starts thinking about himself, that's such a funny concept. why aren't there more pieces around it.

[princessefemmelesbian]

Maybe I’m just being dramatic but it does legitimately scare and sadden me to see that a lot of transandrophobia truthers are literally just…young boys. Like, actual children. Like you’re not even old enough to vote yet and you have your whole life ahead of you and yet you are being manipulated into joining an mra group that hates trans women with a passion and thinks that men are oppressed in society for being men, and constantly uses Black men as their talking point in order to sound diverse and inclusive, meanwhile they’re also appropriating and misusing terminology specifically created by Black women to talk about our own oppression in order to get their misandry point across…to say nothing of the fact that the largest people in this group(including but not limited to its creator!) have misogynistic rape/detrans kinks centered specifically around preying on lesbians and trans women and this is something that is normalized and defended by the vast majority of transandrophobia truthers, or at least defended viciously by every single transandrodork that I’ve ever encountered who argued with me(a lesbian!!!) that actually there’s nothing wrong with getting off to the corrective rape of women because two consenting adults can do whatever they want in the bedroom(yeah right)! Not to mention I have yet to come across a transandrophobia truther who wasn’t also a raging die-hard Zionist.

And that’s why it disturbs me so much to see young trans boys jumping onto this transmisogynistic hate train like you guys realize these men don’t have your best interests at heart, right? They’re only going to manipulate you into being a sexist entitled asshat who shuns and bullies the trans women in your community and sees them as oppressing you. Like I know you’re still in middle/high school but you can still think for yourselves, you can choose to be better than this, you can choose to actually learn about feminism and realize that it’s not actually misandry that oppresses you, it’s transphobia. Misandry doesn’t suddenly become real because you slap a trans paint over it that’s not how it works that’s not how intersectionality works that’s not how any of this shit works. There are better trans men to talk to about trans issues who know that the patriarchy is real and don’t shit on trans women in order to speak out about trans topics, so go seek them out, okay? You absolutely do not have to listen to shit that the “male supremacists but trans” group of lowlives has to say. Hell, tell them to fuck off instead! Please, I promise you that there are much better options, there are ALWAYS better options, and you still have time to escape before they fully radicalize you into basically being an incel. There will ALWAYS be another way. ❤️

[edwinisms]

it’s actually so wild to me that this fairly quirky YA type show gave both of its main characters deaths that can, in one way or another, solidly be considered hate crimes. they were both flat out murdered as a result of being A) gay and effeminate or B) brown (south asian, specifically) and you could argue whether or not those kids thought of it that way in the moment or whatever but the bottom line is that they would not have been in the situations that killed them if they weren’t of their respective minorities. like legitimately that is a ballsy choice for this kind of netflix show, let alone for the two Main Characters, and i respect it big time

[txttletale]

me when i actually care about racism and in fact care about it so much that i straight up forget what the original controversy was and confidently assert it was something completely different because i definitely care about it beyond using it as a bludgeon against the Evil Trannies i constantly call pedophiles

[gamer2002]

Out: Black people can act civilized like everyone else

In: Peace and quiet is racist

[golden--goofball]

might be time for me to delete tiktok because WHAT in the fuck is this bullshit.

(click to see full images)

i can TASTE my brain rotting from reading these comments holy fucking shit dude.

[unlimitedbutchworks]

wild as fuck how trans men on here can openly and flippantly accuse random innocent trans women of being pedos to drum up moral outrage against them quickly, and when people start to point out that hey, that’s insane, she’s never done or said anything like that, these shithead dudes are like “well she said something racist too or is into incest or raceplay or something else that’ll stick despite not being on any of her blogs so it’s like whatever” and then their audiences are just like ohhh ok and everybody forgets and forgives the blatant pedojacketing while keeping the fury of it after being mollified by whatever progressive sounding idpol they shit out. disgusting!