#separate and unequal

[ausetkmt]

ATHENS, Ala. — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was born about 40 miles from his great-great-grandfathers’ Alabama cotton farms, worked by slaves a 100 years before.

Like so many long-standing Southern white families, McConnell's forebearers built their wealth with free slave labor and cheap land. Two of his great-great-grandfathers owned more than a dozen slaves, census records reviewed by the USA TODAY Network show.

The Kentucky Republican has known of his family's slave-owning past since at least 1994, when he wrote a letter to a Limestone County judge requesting information about his great-great-grandfather James McConnell, a slave owner, and the settlement of his ancestor's estate.

But his 2016 memoir, “The Long Game,” contains no mention that the "colorful McConnells” he wrote about owned slaves, NBC reported. 

As a child during segregation, McConnell lived on the white side of Athens, where black residents were only allowed to visit for work and were typically paid very low wages.

While Kentucky's senior senator has consistently condemned slavery and racism throughout his long political career, his vocal opposition to slavery reparations in any form has fueled the growing national debate about whether African Americans deserve restitution for enduring centuries of economic exploitation.

"I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago when none of us currently living are responsible is a good idea,” McConnell said in June. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”

Mitch McConnell:We paid for 'sin of slavery' by electing Obama

McConnell’s remarks, which made national headlines, came the day before a rare congressional hearing in which Democratic leaders and celebrities sought support for a bill that would establish a committee to “study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations.”

McConnell did not respond this week to a USA TODAY Network request for additional comment about why he opposes reparations despite the lasting economic damages African Americans suffered from slavery and segregation. 

Records about the McConnell family shed light on the history of the region that residents say is still shaped by the legacy of slavery.

The senator’s family history could be a case study in the way many whites built lasting wealth in part by exploiting the labor of enslaved African Americans.

The enduring legacy of that history lies in the balance sheets, supporters of reparations contend. On average, black Americans own roughly one-tenth of the amount of wealth that white families do, according to Federal Reserve statistics.

David Malone, whose family has roots as deep as the McConnell family in the Limestone County area of northern Alabama, believes reparations are a good idea.

Malone's great-grandparents were slaves, and he remembers his grandparents, who were sharecroppers, telling him how white farm owners kept them poor and in debt.

"I know it would be almost impossible to pay everybody related to slaves," Malone said. "When you think of how many people’s lives were lost working for nothing for 400 years, I would agree it should be done. But how it should be done I don’t know."

'Alabama Fever' drew McConnell's forebearers

In northern Alabama, the McConnell family’s slave-owning history is a common one among longtime white families.

His maternal and paternal great-great-grandparents, James McConnell and Richard H. Daley, moved from North Carolina and Virginia during the “Alabama Fever” years in the early and mid-1800s, census records show.

They were farmers and may have brought slaves with them when they moved, as many white families did.

It was a boom period for the cotton industry, fueled by the revolutionary invention of the cotton gin in 1793, and Alabama had plenty of cheap, fertile land.

In 1838, James McConnell, Mitch McConnell’s paternal great-great-grandfather, bought more than 600 acres, according to Limestone County property records.

The lush land was near the Tennessee River in the northwesternmost corner of Alabama, on the Tennessee state line.

"In that time, the Tennessee River was raging, and there was fertile land that you could pretty much buy for nothing,” said James Walker, a local historian and retired teacher whose ancestors were slaves and sharecroppers in the area. "Alabama became a state in 1819, and the Civil War started in 1861. So, for 40 years or so, slavery was big in Limestone County. Slaves outnumbered the whites."

In 1850, about 17,000 people lived in Limestone County, Alabama, and 8,500 were slaves, said county archivist Rebekah Davis.

"There were a few very wealthy planter families that came here from Virginia and the Carolinas who owned a very large number of slaves," Davis said. "There’s still a lot of black Malones in this county because there was a white Malone who owned lots and lots of slaves. It’s still the most common black name in Limestone County."

Davis, part of a group working to preserve the only black school in Limestone County for decades after the Civil War, said economic disparities persist, but she doesn’t support paying reparations for the decisions of people who lived more than 100 years ago.

In some cases, descendants of slaves have prospered, she noted. The Bridgeforth family of Limestone County is one of America’s most successful black farming families.

"They did have to start one foot behind, and the black section of town is economically depressed," Davis said. "But I don’t think you can equitably say: ‘Your ancestor was worth this much.'"

Opinion:McConnell is clueless when it comes to slavery and how it still affects us

The McConnell family slaves

After NBC News reported earlier this week that McConnell's great-great-grandfathers had owned 14 slaves, he responded by pointing out that President Barack Obama’s ancestors also were slave owners.

"You know, once again I find myself in the same position as President Obama," he said. "We both oppose reparations, and both are the descendants of slaveholders."

A USA TODAY Network review of census documents and local property and accounting records show that slave ownership was passed down through generations and persisted in the McConnell family through the Civil War.

Richard Daley, McConnell’s maternal great-great-grandfather, reported owning five young female slaves in the 1850 U.S. Census Slave Schedule.

But he said that four "mulatto," or mixed race, slaves — ages 20, 18, 4 and 2 — were escaped fugitives. One 22-year-old black woman remained at his farm, the document shows.

In the 1860 census, Daley reported owning another five slaves — a 30-year-old "mulatto" female, an 11-year-old "mulatto" female and two "mulatto" boys ages 7 and 10 or 12.

They also escaped, according to the document, but one 39-year-old black female slave remained.

The names of slaves and receipts of sale transactions are difficult to trace. Slaves either moved with families from other states into Alabama or were purchased at auctions in Montgomery.

Josiah and Jane Daley, the parents of Richard Daley, also owned slaves, according to Limestone County Chancery Court records from the mid-1800s. A property dispute mentions their two female slaves, 10-year-old Nancy and 20-year-old Eliza.

James McConnell, whose farm was next to Daley’s, had four female "mulatto" slaves ages 25, 4, 3 and 1 who all escaped, according to the 1860 census.

But, after the Civil War broke out, James McConnell had numerous slaves, according to his accounts the USA TODAY Network reviewed.

Read more:Sen. Mitch McConnell's family owned 14 slaves in Alabama

$4 for boots; $1,500 for slaves

Mitch McConnell requested some of those records in 1994, nine years after he was first elected to the U.S. Senate.

"I have been researching my family history and would appreciate your assistance,” he wrote in a letter to the Limestone County Archives. “I would like information relating to the settlement of the estate of James McConnell.”

The file the senator requested documented James McConnell’s purchases and sales, administered by his son, Andrew. It served as his will and included a list of heirs to receive payments upon his death.

In 1860, James McConnell paid $4 for boots, $1.40 for “lady shoes,” $3 for two bushels of wheat, 75 cents for a long-handle shovel, and $3 for “1 fine hat,” records show.

The accounts also included slave sales during and after the Civil War.

On April 15, 1863, the ledger noted: "To amount received on sale of slaves Confederate state money $1,500."

At the time, the area was occupied by Union Army troops, which included two local black infantry regiments.

After the war, in March 1867, James McConnell recorded: “To amount received of Elledge by way of compromise of the balance of the amount due on sale of slaves $235.”

Diverging fortunes for blacks and whites 

Mitch McConnell’s family’s prominence is still apparent in Athens, where he lived until the third grade when his family moved for better opportunities.

But there are clear indications that success and equality have come much more slowly for African Americans in Athens.

There is only one black-owned business downtown: The Sweetest Thing Tea Room. 

Black obituaries and funeral notices only recently began being added to the county archives, where white families have long had their loved ones' information recorded.

"Slavery still affects the fortunes of African Americans. On one side of town, there are immaculate lawns and houses with two-car garages," said Walker, the local historian. "On the other side of town, you’ve got rundown shacks and terrible lawns."

Walker remembers segregated water fountains, restrooms and movie theaters.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I never went in the white restroom, but, in the colored restroom, there was paper on the floor, and it was never clean.”

Walker’s great-grandfather escaped slavery and became a soldier before establishing his own farm. But the family struggled, and after graduating from Morehouse College, Walker faced a choice of farming cotton or going into the military.

He joined the Army in the Vietnam War and retired about two decades later as a lieutenant colonel. He went on to teach African American history.

"The Jewish people received reparations from the Holocaust, and Japanese people received money for their internment during World War II,” said Walker, who supports reparations. "This country is built primarily on the backs of African Americans. And the primary difference between African Americans and European Americans today is economics.”

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell’s former home with its large windows, porch and white picket fence stands on a tree-lined street near the town square.

A neighbor across the street remembered playing with water guns with McConnell as children, according to an Athens News Courier article.

Richard Martin, who is white and about the age as the 77-year-old Kentucky senator, remembers segregation differently. His family also has deep roots in Limestone County.

“When I was a little boy, we had a little club and initiation was you had to drink out of a black fountain,” Martin said. “We thought it was something, that we were tough.

"I was the little white boy who had everything. We had African American folks working for us. But segregation cheated me, too."

Martin said he didn’t make any black friends until he joined the Army, and he wishes it had happened earlier.

Martin opposes the idea of reparations. But he serves on the board working to preserve the former all-black Trinity High School, which was founded by a missionary in 1865 and provided the rare opportunity for black children to get an education. It’s now a community and event center.

‘Watch him, don’t trust him’

Nowadays, race relations are mostly cordial in Limestone County but for a few rare blowups.

Cotton is still a popular crop to farm in the area, but technology has replaced the need for most human labor.

In April, a brawl erupted at Athens High School after a parent started a "Black Lives Matter" chant on campus. When police responded, a fight broke out. A video showed officers hitting several students.

The incident prompted gossip around town for a few days, locals said. But they viewed it as an outlier.

Limestone County Probate Judge Charles Woodroof, who holds the title McConnell’s great-uncle once had, shares a similar family history. His family moved from Virginia to farm the cheap land in the 1800s, and they owned slaves.

But to Woodroof, reparations are an archaic idea.

"I vaguely remember a couple of situations where there might have been two water fountains," Woodroof said. "I know from being in this position and being an attorney here that a lot of people have been highly successful — both African Americans and whites.

"We’re so many generations beyond that. It was part of our history, and we learned it in school. But I don’t experience it.”

But for many descendants of slaves in the area, reparations would bring some long-overdue economic justice, they say.

“It would mean that somebody has finally agreed that we deserve something, and I would give it to my grandkids,” said Malone, whose relatives were slaves and sharecroppers.

"My grandmother never taught me to hate. But she was treated so bad by the white man. So, she told me: ‘Watch him. Don’t trust him, because if there’s something you’ve got that he wants, he will beat you out of it.'"

Opinion:This is how reparations could work, but we're not holding our breath

[reasoningdaily]

2023 KU KLUX COURT: White lawmakers want to create new court system for Jackson, MS |

https://www.sunherald.com/news/politics-government/article272284283.html

A white supermajority of the Mississippi House voted after an intense, four-plus hour debate to create a separate court system and an expanded police force within the city of Jackson — the Blackest city in America — that would be appointed completely by white state officials.

If House Bill 1020 becomes law later this session, the white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court would appoint two judges to oversee a new district within the city — one that includes all of the city’s majority-white neighborhoods, among other areas. The white state attorney general would appoint four prosecutors, a court clerk, and four public defenders for the new district. The white state public safety commissioner would oversee an expanded Capitol Police force, run currently by a white chief.

The appointments by state officials would occur in lieu of judges and prosecutors being elected by the local residents of Jackson and Hinds County — as is the case in every other municipality and county in the state.

Mississippi’s capital city is 80% Black and home to a higher percentage of Black residents than any major American city. Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote. Every legislative Republican is white, and most Democrats are Black.

After thorough and passionate dissent from Black members of the House, the bill passed 76-38 Tuesday primarily along party lines. Two Black member of the House — Rep. Cedric Burnett, a Democrat from Tunica, and Angela Cockerham, an independent from Magnolia — voted for the measure. All but one lawmaker representing the city of Jackson — Rep. Shanda Yates, a white independent — opposed the bill.

“Only in Mississippi would we have a bill like this … where we say solving the problem requires removing the vote from Black people,” Rep. Ed Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton, said while pleading with his colleagues to oppose the measure.

For most of the debate, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba — who has been publicly chided by the white Republicans who lead the Legislature — looked down on the House chamber from the gallery. Lumumba accused the Legislature earlier this year of practicing “plantation politics” in terms of its treatment of Jackson, and of the bill that passed Tuesday, he said: “It reminds me of apartheid.”

Hinds County Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten, who served in the House before being elected judge and would be one of the existing judges to lose jurisdiction under this House proposal, also watched the debate.

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who oversees the Capitol Police, watched a portion of the debate from the House gallery, chuckling at times when Democrats made impassioned points about the bill. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the only statewide elected official who owns a house in Jackson, walked onto the House floor shortly before the final vote.

Rep. Blackmon, a civil rights leader who has a decades-long history of championing voting issues, equated the current legislation to the Jim Crow-era 1890 Constitution that was written to strip voting rights from Black Mississippians.

“This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again,” Blackmon said from the floor. “We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves.’”

The bill was authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican whose hometown of Senatobia is 172 miles north of Jackson. It was sent to Lamar’s committee by Speaker Philip Gunn instead of a House Judiciary Committee, where similar legislation normally would be heard.

“This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place,” Lamar said, citing numerous news sources who have covered Jackson’s high crime rates. Dwelling on a long backlog of Hinds County court cases, Lamar said the bill was designed to “help not hinder the (Hinds County) court system.”

Many House members who represent Jackson on Tuesday said they were never consulted by House leadership about the bill. Several times during the debate, they pointed out that Republican leaders have never proposed increasing the number of elected judges to address a backlog of cases or increasing state funding to assist an overloaded Jackson Police Department.

In earlier sessions, the Legislature created the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which covers much of the downtown, including the state government office complex and other areas of Jackson. The bill would extend the existing district south to Highway 80, north to County Line Road, west to State Street and east to the Pearl River. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people live within the area.

Opponents of the legislation, dozens of whom have protested at the Capitol several days this year, accused the authors of carving out mostly white, affluent areas of the city to be put in the new district.

The bill would double the funding for the district to $20 million in order to increase the size of the existing Capitol Police force, which has received broad criticism from Jacksonians for shooting several people in recent months with little accountability.

The new court system laid out in House Bill 1020 is estimated to cost $1.6 million annually.

Democratic members of the House said if they wanted to help with the crime problem, the Legislature could increase the number of elected judges in Hinds County. Blackmon said Hinds County was provided four judges in 1992 when a major redistricting occurred, and that number has not increased since then even as the caseload for the four judges has exploded.

In addition, Blackmon said the number of assistant prosecuting attorneys could be increased within Hinds County. In Lamar’s bill, the prosecuting of cases within the district would be conducted by attorneys in the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who is white.

Blackmon said the bill was “about a land grab,” not about fighting crime. He said other municipalities in the state had higher crime rates than Jackson. Blackmon asked why the bill would give the appointed judges the authority to hear civil cases that had nothing to do with crime.

“When Jackson becomes the No. 1 place for murder, we have a problem,” Lamar responded, highlighting the city’s long backlog of court cases. Several Democrats, during the debate, pointed out that the state of Mississippi’s crime lab has a lengthy backlog, as well, adding to the difficult in closing cases in Hinds County.

Lamar said the Mississippi Constitution gives the Legislature the authority to create “inferior courts,” as the Capitol Complex system would be. The decisions of the appointed judges can be appealed to Hinds County Circuit Court.

Democrats offered seven amendments, including one to make the judges elected. All were defeated primarily along partisan and racial lines.

“We are not incompetent,” said Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson. “Our judges are not incompetent.”

An amendment offered by Rep. Cheikh Taylor, D-Starkville, to require the Capitol Police to wear body cameras was approved. Lamar voiced support for the amendment.

Much of the debate centered around the issue of creating a court where the Black majority in Hinds County would not be allowed to vote on judges.

One amendment that was defeated would require the appointed judges to come from Hinds County. Lamar said by allowing the judges to come from areas other than Hinds County would ensure “the best and brightest” could serve. Black legislators said the comment implied that he judges and other court staff could not be found within the Black majority population of Hinds County.

When asked why he could not add more elected judges to Hinds County rather than appointing judges to the new district, Lamar said, “This is the bill that is before the body.”

[wnchester67]

S1E1

Q: What makes this episode so fuckin good?

Well, kind of everything.

As any good narrative should, this episode sets up (even if briefly) a normal, apple pie life, and then disrupts that normalcy in a big way. There’s this sense of dramatic irony as the viewer catches on to the foreboding feeling the show is doling out (flickering lights, the MUSIC, etc) and the characters remain unaware until it’s too late. Then, the best moment of the introductory scene, “Take your brother outside as fast as you can.” I really feel like this sets up the entire premise of the show, a thematic motif if you will, wherein Dean is his brother’s keeper (KIN).

The next segment of the episode sort of repeats the disruption of normalcy, settling the viewer into Sam’s life at school while creating this intrigue by setting him up as the estranged golden child. Then we get Dean’s introduction (which is the best fucking character intro possibly ever), aka the disruption of normalcy. I could talk about this for literally ever, but for now I wanna focus on one thing in particular: the dialogue. The writer's are presented with these complex characters and history and have like one scene to start revealing the important shit that sets up the rest of the episode, and they do that via clever, efficient dialogue between Sam and Dean. Most everything they say to one another either reveals plot or characterization, and does so in a way that feels really natural. My personal favorite thing about the dialogue is how it sets up this recurring theme of the struggle between wanting a normal, 'apple pie' life, and being unable to have it (and each brother's feelings on the subject, which makes me crazy). The dialogue for the rest of the episode is equally good at revealing who each of the brothers are, and how they were raised.

Now I'm gonna fast forward to the end of the episode, not because the rest of the episode isn't great (it's really great), but because the way the episode ends is a big part of what makes it stand out so much to me. Jess's death is the perfect example of a character death being necessary to move the plot forward. The show would not proceed the same way at all without her death happening when it does and the way it does, and the way it brings the episode full circle is just... as a writer I could actually piss my pants thinking about it.

In my opinion, while the middle bits of the episode are really good, its truly the beginning and end that make the episode such a stand out. It's the perfect introduction to the series, laying out enough information to let you know what's going on while still keeping a few cards close to the chest to keep you intrigued. I've already watched the whole series more than once, and every time I come back to this episode it's just really, really fucking good.

[howifeltabouthim]

'Good-bye, good-bye,' she repeated, her fingers fluttering on the table like a pianist's while her eyes told him how little he had ever meant to her.

L.P. Hartley, from The Harness Room

[agentravensong]

I'm super interested in seeing the results of the deltarune ending poll. It's been something I've been wanting to see Tumblrs opinion on. SPECIFICALLY because a different website with 24/7 deltarune discussion (4chan) seems 100% convinced the ending could not possibly be anything but the most maximum tragedy. Darkworld destroyed, multiple main character deaths, Rudy and Dess deaths ect ect. the whole works. I'm interested in seeing normal fans idea on how sad/happy the ending is likely to be.

Well, now that it's closed, let's see!

The main thing this tells me is that there isn't a strong consensus, at least here on tumblr. The three most negative options (time loop, all darkness banished, world ends) being the least voted for certainly contrasts with what you've said about the 4chan fandom, but it makes sense. People tend not to find such negative endings satisfying.

And, similarly, it makes sense that the option which basically keeps the status quo (darkners are confined to dw but lightners can visit) was barely voted for more than those. If the story is just going to return to the status quo by the end - especially one that keeps things unequal between lightners and darkners - what was the point?

I think the world being remade winning the poll is probably just because of my specific circle of mutuals / dr fans, lol. Among people who go harder on the "dark worlds are metaphors for fiction" angle, I figure that option would be less popular. Something about the importance of not eroding the barrier between fiction and reality to the point of confusing one for the other.

If you'd like to see more opinions on this, I'd recommend checking the notes of the original poll; here's the link :)

[kutputli]

God, I am annoyed at Nathan only being given a contractually obligated split second of screen time this episode.

I am diverting all my irritation into talking about how networking and nepotism intersects with race, using Ms Shandy Fine as my beauteous example. I need to to do a rewatch with subtitles on to make notes for that. Meanwhile quick reaction post for the rest of the stuff -

I have been so immersed in fanon for so long that I had to deliberately shift my gears down to remember that Colin wasn't known to be gay for the average het viewer. Or for us, really - one grindr comment does not a canonical queer make, not with picking up on twenty years of subtext that never makes it into text. So yay, I guess, for the first undeniably queer character on the show. I head 'sex after you get back' instead of 'text' and I thought this was a hookup situation, but it turns out he's a boyfriend? I have been looking through the internet trying to find the actor's name, but omg finally an East Asian character with speaking lines! And he's very very cute. I hate that he has to act like a wingman for Colin, and I just hope he doesn't get too hurt in the inevitable outing that the show is leading up to.

I see that the gentle, kind, Ted Lasso effect does not extend towards casual homophobia in the dressing room. This is where HR rules being strictly implemented brings about better DEI reform than one Nice White Saviour.

I enjoyed Zava a lot. I think he was very well written, and beautifully acted. A completely batshit diva who is genuinely as good as his press, and who isn't an asshole. Two pointed differences - him saying the kitman is the most important person in the room, and him not actively being mean towards any one individual. That's the difference between him and Jamie. Appropriative meditative techniques aside, this is a man who has a stable marriage which is loving enough for him to relocate for - which makes him better at adult relationships than most of the other characters we've seen on the show so far. Carry on chewing that scenery Maximilian, its very entertaining.

What is not entertaining is the white people trainwrecks going on with the women. I get Jane is an abusive shit, why must this point be belaboured? There is no entertainment nor pathos here, and I see no point to it, unless it is for the one Beard centric episode where Men Can Be Abused Also becomes the theme.

Rebecca side-eyeing the flirtation between Sam and his head chef is also wearying. The chef is very cute, and I'm so happy for Sam to have his restaurant, but also - same uneven power dynamics in a workplace! Aaaaa

The psychic storyline is just complete twaddle. Give that screentime to literally anyone else. It is the worst of all rom-com elements to introduce.

Speaking of unethical relationships - holy fucking hell what the fuck show writers having TWO female therapists dismiss as mildly unethical a marriage counsellor having a romantic relationship with his ex-client???!!!!! How, what why.... I am just. Gobsmacked. I was getting irritated with Ted still being hung up over Michelle, but of course the poor guy will have trust issues if the first therapist he opened up to is now shagging the mother of his child! And his current therapist doesn't act like its a massive violation of ethics he should be reported for. And his casual hookup therapist makes an extremely dark joke about paedophilia to brush it off. AAAAAAAAA

OK a rewatch then to post about Nate and Shandy and how I couldn't spot Mr Bhargava anywhere though I tried to keep an eye out!

(Trent Crimm remains as hairsome and louche as every, and he is my mary sue because I too, can never spell diahhreoa.)

[emperornorton47]

I'd like to see a source on the bar exam.

White America can not tolerate black humanity on any level. Then, when you remind them, white America claim they are victim of racism.

[holdoncallfailed]

Throughout all this women everywhere tended their children, milked their cattle, tilled their fields, washed, baked, cleaned and sewed, healed the sick, sat by the dying and laid out the dead—just as some women, somewhere are doing at this moment. The extraordinary continuity of women's work, from country to country and age to age, is one of the reasons for its invisibility; the sight of a woman nursing a baby, stirring a cook-pot or cleaning a floor is as natural as the air we breathe, and like the air it attracted no scientific analysis before the modern period. While there was work to be done, women did it, and behind the vivid foreground activities of popes and kings, wars and discoveries, tyranny and defeat, working women wove the real fabric of the kind of history that has yet to receive its due. For the unremarked, taken-for-granted status of women's work applied equally to their lives, and both combined to ensure that what women did went largely absent from the historical record. Official documents might carefully note the annual output of a farmer, for example, his total of milk, meat, eggs or grain, without ever questioning how much of that was produced by his wife's labor. The question itself would not apply—since the wife belonged to her husband by every law of the land and by her own consent too, then her labor and the fruits of it were also his. Consequently the idea of a separate reckoning would have been laughable. By definition, then, the only women whose activities were so recorded were not typical of the working majority—widows, for instance, seeking legal permission to carry on the trade of their late husbands, or deserted or runaway wives forced to fend for themselves. [...] For even the most cursory survey of women's reveals that its range, quantity and significance has been massively underestimated, not least by women themselves. In every era, they have simply got on with the job, whatever it was. Women have never questioned, for instance, the fact that, already burdened with an unequal share of the work of re-creating the race, they have had to work in fields and factories as well—nor that their role as wives, mothers and homemakers entails a disproportionate amount and variety of other kinds of work—domestic, social, medical, education, emotional, and sexual.

— Rosalind Miles, Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World (emphasis in original)

[communistkenobi]

could you expand / share reading materials on "gender is a structure that mediates access to personhood"? i feel like that's an important point that i don't fully grasp. especially because it is my understanding that until relatively recently even white, bourgeois, cis-heterosexual, perisex etc women were also denied personhood, but were already gendered as women, right?

thanks in advance!

I’m so sorry you sent me this ask like three months ago and I’m only getting around to it now lol

This is going to be a long post. I will be talking a lot about citizenship and rights in this post. I’ll include citations, but two overarching texts I will be engaging with a lot are Unequal Freedom (2004) by Evelyn Nakano Glenn and The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1989) by Gøsta Esping-Andersen.

This is also not meant to be a comprehensive answer to your question. I am much less familiar with migration & refugee scholarship, which is obviously deeply engaged with the concept of citizenship as an apparatus for granting rights. I’m flagging this because my answer has a particular focus that is not generalisable. Everything I say is not “the answer” to your question, but an answer informed by specific domains of scholarship.

First, I think a good place to start is that when we talk about ‘personhood’ as a status that a human being can or cannot possess, we are often talking about a status that is realisable through citizenship. ‘Personhood’ is itself a legal term, and we can see this in how stateless people (i.e. people with no citizenship) are treated - because rights are granted by and administered through states, being without state citizenship means you are unable to realise any set of rights, and therefore, you are rendered as a non-person. The UN has two separate conventions on the rights of stateless people for example, as being stateless is necessarily an international issue. I think this approach helps makes sense of why “human rights” is a popular framing in discussions of how to remediate inequality (e.g. “trans rights are human rights”). The “human” part of that equation is only realised through the attainment of “rights,” i.e., through citizenship. Citizenship = personhood can also be seen when people invoke “second class citizens” as an articulation of legal, political, and societal discrimination - i.e., groups of people who have less/no access to rights compared to other groups within a state. Systems of classed citizenship often emerge from regimes of settler colonialism, slavery, and apartheid (Glenn discusses this in her book).

The basic Marxist intervention in this discussion is that this class system still exists even in places that have abolished slavery, abolished apartheid, and/or gone through formal decolonisation, because state law under capitalism is fundamentally unjust. Marx calls law the “mystification of power” (I believe he says this in The German Ideology? I'm rusty on my Marx readings lol) - he argues that law is a bourgeois system of justice that caters to the wealthy and powerful and disenfranchises the poor and marginal, but appears as neutral and fair through a liberal “theater” (Marx’s term from The 18th Brumaire) of equality and democracy, mystifying its actual effects and purpose (The Red Demiurge (2015) by Scott Newton is a book about Soviet legal history that goes into some of this. His focus is on the evolution of the Bolshevik relationship to law as the USSR developed and encountered quite literally new legal problems that emerged as a result of the formation of a socialist state). This is also part of the Marxist critique of nationalism - if state citizenship is what grants access to rights, and citizenship is classed (through your relationship to production, through white supremacy, through patriarchy, through colonial status, through religious status, through etc), then equality does not legally exist, that all equality is bourgeois equality, i.e., not universal, not equal.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen provides a really helpful theory of thinking about citizenship rights within a capitalist state (his book only focuses on Western imperial core states, so just flagging that lol). He begins by arguing that:

all markets are regulated by the state, there is no actual “free” or anarcho-capitalist market,

because of this necessary regulatory function provided by the state, the commodity of wage-labour (i.e., the process of selling your labour-power as a “good” or commodity on a market in exchange for money in the form of wages) is likewise always regulated to some degree, and so finally,

welfare should be understood as the regulatory system of the commodity of wage-labour.

This regulatory apparatus is what grants people “social citizenship rights” - sick leave, pensions, disability and unemployment insurance, welfare payments, food stamps, tax bracket placements, childcare, healthcare, education, housing, so on and so on. Within this framework, Esping-Andersen demonstrates that various welfare regimes produce different citizenship classes - Canada, Australia and the US, for example, explicitly reproduce an impoverished “welfare class” through a marginal, means-tested welfare regime that only provides benefits to the very poorest. Various European countries by contrast tend to have what he calls a “corporatist” welfare regime that often grants different social citizenship rights based on which occupation you have, which he argues emerged from feudal and pre-capitalist religious (esp. Catholic) social forms of organisation.

ANYWAY, the purpose of doing all that set-up is to contextualise how we arrive at the question of gender. Feminists make the basic point that citizenship is also classed by gender - in Unequal Freedom, Glenn talks about this in the US, where white women were legally treated as extensions of their husbands and had no access to property rights, voting rights, and so on. Black women, in contrast, were treated sexually as women by slaveholders (i.e., raped and abused) but denied any and all personhood on the basis of their slave status. Citizenship in the US was historically based first on your ability to hold property (reserved for white bourgeois men), and then on your ability to “freely sell” your labour-power on the market - white women were denied citizenship on this basis because they were consigned to managing what was defined as the “private realm,” i.e., the realm that houses free labourers (white men). This public/private distinction emerges through capitalist markets and the commodity of wage-labour, which produces a sharp distinction where productive labour takes place “out there” (paid for in wages by the capitalist class) and reproductive labour takes place “in here” (i.e., labour that is not paid for in wages* by the capitalist class and forms the social basis of reproducing the public labour pool). 

*for white women. see below

As Glenn argues, this public/private distinction in the US is fundamentally racialised. We can see this difference in the emergence of the suffragette movement, where white women appeal to their whiteness (i.e., free labour status) as the rationale for being granted the right to vote. Black women were disqualified from this movement, and did not benefit from white women’s demands for equal citizenship on the basis of them providing all this unpaid reproductive labour to their white husbands, as Black and other racialised women often provided domestic housekeeping labour for white women (unpaid during slavery and for indentured servants, for wages after its abolition). This leaves Black women without a private realm, subjecting them to a “purely public” arena that is uniquely difficult to organise for unionisation and/or improve working conditions (Deborah King talks about this further in Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness (1988)).

Trans-feminism explicates this further - coercive sex assignment at birth classes people on the basis of reproductive capacity. “Females” are impregnated, “males” do the impregnating. This particular system of sex assignment is deeply tied to colonial population management concerns, where measuring the labour capacity of colonised subjects was a matter of managing white wealth (as well as making sure “there weren’t too many of them” compared to white people in colonies - this was especially a major white anxiety after the Haitian Revolution at the turn of the 19th century, the largest slave revolt in history. See Settlers by J Sakai). You can read Maria Lugones’ papers The Coloniality of Gender (2016) and Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System (2007), Alex Adamson's (2022) paper Beyond the Coloniality of Gender, and Guirkinger & Villar's (2022) paper Pro-birth policies, missions, and fertility for some introductory reading.

(Note: patriarchal gender hierarchies predate and exist outside of European colonial domination - it is a popular white queer talking point that Europe invented gender, that indigenous peoples actually all had epic radically equal genderfuck systems that were destroyed by Europe, and this is a very patronising and racist historical generalisation that I want to avoid making. Third World/Global South feminism is a necessary corrective to this - an arena of scholarship I am sadly not well versed in. Sylvia Wynter is the only scholar I’ve engaged with on this topic, which again, is a very limited slice. I welcome reading recommendations in this area).

While sex assignment is coercive for everyone, it is a particular problem for trans people, who are accused of impersonation and ID fraud if our sex markets conflict with our gender presentation, or we don’t “look like” our sex marker to cis people. Because you need a government ID to do basically anything - getting a job, applying for an apartment, getting a driver’s license, going to school, buying a phone plan, being on unemployment, applying for disability, filing an insurance claim, doing your taxes, opening a bank account, getting married, going to the hospital, buying lottery tickets at the corner store, etc - and sex markers appear on basically all government ID in many countries, trans people are systematically denied a whole range of citizenship rights (and thus personhood) on the basis of this sex assignment. Trans people are not merely treated as the wrong gender, they are ungendered, and by this process, rendered ineligible for personhood. Like just as an example, gay marriage is a luxury to trans people, as gay marriage is based on the state recognising both you and your partner’s gender in the first place. (See Heath Fogg Davis’ paper Sex-Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination (2014) for example. Butler also talks about this on a more fundamental level in Bodies That Matter (1993), and Stryker & Sullivan also discuss this in The Queen's Body, the King's Member (2009)).  

This is likewise the impetus behind anti-trans bathroom bills and sports bans - citizenship guarantees, among other things, a right to public space, and these bans are meant to deprive transgender people access to those spaces. These bans should be understood as a way of circumventing the much more difficult process of revoking the citizenship of trans people outright by using a component of citizenship (sex assignment at birth) to impoverish the quality of citizenship that trans people have access to. This is why bans on medical transition are not actually just about medical oppression, but the oppression of trans peoples’ abilities to live in society in general. An instructive parallel is abortion bans for pregnant people, who, in addition to facing medical oppression and violence by being denied healthcare, are likewise systemically marginalised through being forced into the role of “mother” (again we see how cissexualism reduces people to reproductive capacity), economically marginalising them by reducing their capacity to earn a wage, tying them to partners/spouses that now have greater economic and social leverage over them (and thus have greater capacity to assault, rape, and murder them), depriving them of the choice of alternative life paths, and so on.

It’s generally much more difficult to get the state to sign off on unilaterally oppressing a group of citizens by depriving them of citizenship completely, so attacking a group through more narrow and particular policies like healthcare or the use of public space (with the ultimate goal of depriving them of their rights in general) is often much easier and more productive. See Beauchamp's 2019 book Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and US Surveillance Practices, who talks about this in the context of anti-trans bathroom bills in chapter 3. This is also a common thread in disability scholarship, as disabled people are likewise denied much of the same citizenship rights through similar logics - the book Absent Citizens (2009) by Michal J Prince talks about this in the Canadian context. To give an example he uses in the book, in Canada, accessible voting stations were only federally mandated in I believe the 90s, meaning that disabled people were practically disenfranchised until about 30 years ago in Canada, even though there were no laws explicitly banning disabled people from voting.

As a result, any barriers put in place by the state to change your legal name and sex marker should be understood as a comprehensive denial of personhood, not only because we as trans people want our IDs to reflect who we are, but because those barriers make it difficult to do literally anything in civil society. This the basis behind the cry of “trans rights are human rights” - taking away our healthcare rights also fundamentally denies us equal citizenship (and thus personhood), because healthcare is where we get all those little permission slips from doctors and psychologists to change our name and gender marker in the first place. This is of course not remotely the same as being made stateless (trans refugees are placed in a particularly harrowing and violent legal black hole, for example) - I as a white trans person living in the imperial core still benefit from a massive range of material, political and social privileges not afforded to many others, but my transness positions me at a deficit relative to cis people who have the same state citizenship as I do. As I hope I've made clear, it's not a binary case of either having or not having citizenship, but that citizenship is classed, and the quality of your citizenship is heavily dependent on a whole range of social, political, legal, economic, and historical factors that are all largely out of your control.

So not only is gender a barrier to citizenship, it mediates access to realising the full range of personhood within a regime of state citizenship. Trans people are not the only group effected by this, as I described above, but trans people are a group that makes obvious the arbitrary, coercive, and unequal nature of sex assignment through its connection to state citizenship.

[nellasbookplanet]

The fandom god discussion is interesting, but I feel it’s sometimes hindered by an unwillingness to separate gods from mortal society, or even a sort of over-eagerness to project our own reality onto them, which simply doesn’t work. I've seen the gods referred to as rulers or tyrants demanding worship (which I kinda understand because it’s something Ludinus says in-game, though it’s funny to see fandom corners confidently repeat the inaccurate talking points of the antagonist) but more interestingly I've also seen them referred to as a higher/the highest social class, as colonizers imposing themselves on mortals, the raven queen specifically as new money. Overall these comparisons tend to talk about the gods and their actions regarding Aeor in the past and predathos/the Vanguard in the present less as if they're about saving their own lives and more as if they want to preserve their powerful position.

The gods, by their very nature, are above mortals. They cannot be compared to any mortal ruling class because they didn’t choose or strive for that power and cannot feasibly get rid of it/step down/redistribute it (nor do they actually in any sense rule; killing the raven queen, unlike killing an actual queen, will not end the 'tyranny' of death), they simply have it by virtue of being gods. Saying that’s unfair or unequal and that the gods should be killed because of it is akin to saying it’s unfair a mountain is bigger than you and demanding it be levelled, except the gods, unlike mountains, are living, feeling beings who shouldn’t have to die because some people can’t stand the idea of not always being top dog. Thing is, the gods themselves ultimately understood this power imballance and that they can't help but hurt Exandria the way humans can't help but step on bugs, and thus removed themselves from the equation by creating the divine gate. Saying this isn’t enough and that they're clinging to power is just demanding they line themselves up to be killed.

[reasoningdaily]

REVOLT: White Mississippi officials vote for separate court system in majority-Black town

In an article published yesterday (Feb. 7), Mississippi Today revealed that a white supermajority member of the Mississippi House voted “to create a separate court system and an expanded police force” in Jackson. The city is known for having a large population of Black residents. The measure would reportedly see only white state officials governing that court.

The outlet said the proposal is called House Bill 1020, and if passed into law, the Mississippi Supreme Court would be run by a white chief justice, a white state attorney general and a white state public safety commissioner. They would be in charge of the Capitol Police force in the city with a majority-Black presence. According to the article, 80 percent of Jackson’s citizens are African American, which is higher than any major city in the United States. “Mississippi’s Legislature is thoroughly controlled by white Republicans, who have redrawn districts over the past 30 years to ensure they can pass any bill without a single Democratic vote,” the report added.

Rep. Edward Blackmon believes the vote is a setup. “This is just like the 1890 Constitution all over again. We are doing exactly what they said they were doing back then: ‘Helping those people because they can’t govern themselves,’” the politician said during the voting procedure. Republican Rep. Trey Lamar disagreed: “This bill is designed to make our capital city of Jackson, Mississippi, a safer place.” He added that House Bill 1020 was created to “help not hinder the [Hinds County] court system.”

Mississippi has a history of Black residents suffering disproportionately from the legal system in comparison to other races — so much so that for years, JAY-Z has been using his platform to sue and expose the Mississippi Department of Corrections. The mogul plans to spread light on the injustices within the prison system in an upcoming docuseries approved by A&E. “In 2020, Roc Nation and Team Roc launched a fight to put a stop to the literal death sentences imposed on inmates through the inhumane, violent and torturous conditions created by Parchman prison officials,” a statement released by the label last year read in part. His lawsuits against the Mississippi Department of Corrections and Parchman have since been dropped after conditions reportedly improved.

[catwouthats]

Lokius vs Sylki season 2 episode 2 (cinematography wise)

Green background (in this show I’ve analyzed it’s usually used as a color for enchantment)

Bodies overlap from our angle

Completely facing each other

Nothing blocking them from each other

Equal playing field (both eating pie)

Orange/yellow tones (I’ve analyzed this color is usually used for lying and betrayal)

Bodies separated

Not entirely facing each other (though they do later)

BIG ASS CASH REGISTER AS A BARRIER BETWEEN THEM

Unequal playing field (employee vs customer)

[howifeltabouthim]

After all, how is any girl really to know anything of a man's life?

Anthony Trollope, from Phineas Finn

[zinzabee]

Hi @birthday-cake-rockz! I hope its okay if I answer your questions here in a separate post. I definitely have some tips and thoughts for help with drawing Raph.

First of all, I recommend This free PDF of the book "Morpho - Fat and Skin Folds: Anatomy for Artist" for those who are interested in really getting familiar & comfortable with drawing larger/fat/thick body types. (Make sure you click the second link, the first one is broken)

Now for Raph specifically, I do have a one very important shape I use when I draw him that might be helpful:

A lot of people like to associate diamonds with Raph as much as squares, and I think that's accurate to his design, too! The boy has a lot of serious neck muscle going on, and so his trapezius muscles and those surround it are gonna be more visible. Which actually creates a diamond shape around his collarbone and upper body. If you follow along with the angles of his shell, you can create this shape to help give him that stronger upper body look!

As for his leg proportions, that's a bit tricky because unlike his brothers, Raph's lower limbs are disproportionate to his upper limbs. It's a case of "you have to understand the rules of anatomy in order to break them".

SO!! Real quick anatomy lesson that I learned in art school: the average adult body should be about 7 heads high. Because the boys are teenagers, theirs come up to be about 6 heads high, which I credit to their younger age. But as you can see by the red marked areas, everything is still in normal proportion.

Raph, on the other hand, is different.

Raph's arms are as long as his body is, and his legs are much shorter than his arms. Because of this, he's actually disproportionate to his brothers, since his height is only about 5 and a half heads tall, rather than 6 or 7. In particular, his thighs seem to be unequally shorter in length than the calves. I think its important to keep that in mind when draw him! Because even if you know he's made up of all these thick, blocky shapes, if you try to give him the normal proportions you would Leo or Donnie or Mikey, it might still not look right. He's a stocky lad, and his upper body strength is showcased by these design choices.

Hope all this was helpful for you guys. Now go be free and draw him to your hearts content! :)

Additionally, here are several other links to posts people have created that give references of Raph and the other turtles! I'm sure these will be a big help, too.

High Quality Reference Sheets of everyone, including April and Splinter

Turtle Side Profiles Specifically

Multi-Angle Ref Sheets

RAPH'S SHELL

MASTERPOSTS by @melancholic-rowen: RAPH | LEO | DONNIE | MIKEY | APRIL | CASEY | CASEY JUNIOR

[satanfemme]

The bill states that when it comes to transgender people, “The term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical’,” which raises the question: what does “equal” even mean? The bill does not define the word, only declares that “equal” no longer means “same” or “identical” within the state of Iowa for transgender people. When the sponsor was asked directly what the word “equal” means in this bill, the representative Heather Hora answered: “Equal would mean … um … I would assume that equal would mean … I don’t know exactly in this context.”

[...]

The bill’s sponsor is not content with redefining the word equal, however; the bill goes on to proclaim that “separate” is “not inherently unequal”. One opponent to the bill pointed to the cruel history of the doctrine of “separate but equal” and the attempt to revive that history with a new, Republican-condoned target. Though the new definition of the word “equal” and the revival of the “separate but equal” doctrine only applies to transgender people, the precedents that make up the bedrock of equality for all are threatened. Is it so important for Republicans to get a political victory against transgender people in the state that they are willing to go this far?

another important article from Erin Reed, which not only highlights the current anti-trans movement in Iowa but also points out how current anti-trans legislation could put even more marginalized groups at risk

[gt-daboss]

Two Different Worlds

CW: slightly depressing/unequal world? (I'll add more if asked)

Any giant, for whatever reason, can enter human cities. Be it a business negotiation or visiting family and friends, the city will welcome them all, for a price. With giant societies being the proprietors of nearly all the wealth in the frontier, humans are treated as faux second-class citizens. Not generating enough influence to really matter when a problem is presented, especially one where the sole cause is the giants themselves. For but a small cost, any of them can enter a human city, with free reign over everything we've built. Stomping their way through with little regard for the 'equal' citizens below, humans are forced to make way for them as the giant ooh's and aah's degradingly at the city miniaturized for their liking.

Every Human grows up with the constant, oppressive weight of being considered lesser, No, physically BEING lesser. Smaller, tiny, insignificant, a pest, a human. But to be presented with a person so fabulously wealthy, so physically above you and your peers, and all they do when they see your city is laugh...

It's like living in a separate world.