#there's too many stolen indigenous remains there

[lockhartandlych]

always ask where they get their products from in oddities shops. always. and if the clerk is vague, that's a huge red flag. it doesnt matter if you think you're being annoying. if you don't ask that then there will be no way to know if the desiccated bat you're buying was found in someone's attic or poached. there will be no way to know if the "legally for sale" human femur you're about to decorate your shelf with is from a donor or the stolen remains of an indigenous person.

and even then, store clerks can just... lie about it. oddities collectors have historically included the likes of P.T. fucking Barnum, known of course for his truthfulness and steadfast solidarity towards marginalized communities. (Before you piss-on-the-poor me, know that the underlined portions are links. Click on them.) And if you think you can "tell" when people are deceiving you, know that people have been thinking that for far more generations than you have been alive, and they've been fooled all the same. i can't physically stop you from buying human remains, but i strongly encourage you be more vigilant than a frightened deer if you even want to think about buying some.

[incorrect-jojolands-quotes]

Hot take but I think what we saw in chapter 13 was necessary.

I don't think a lot of people realize how important it is for Araki to portray what he did, even if it extremely difficult to take in. Let me explain.

Araki has discussed about topics like racial and class disparity through both Steel Ball Run and Jojolion, but JOJOLands is different because the discussions are now very direct. We had Chapter 1 open up with police brutality and Chapter 13 open with intense bullying; both acts were committed by people of higher social standing/power and seemingly White (or white passing) and both are harming a dark-skinned queer individual. Not only that, remember that Hawai'i is an island stolen and colonized by the US and many indigenous individuals who were supposed to live and maintain kapu are being forced to endure housing problems, loss of culture, etc. due to gentrification and exploitation of its lands. 2020 was when we saw global protest towards the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor due to police brutality, which has spread as far as Japan in terms of demonstrations and rallies. Araki has made it clear that he tries to take real world experience into his writing, and this is no different. He is also no stranger to portraying law enforcement throughout his parts without glorifying or downplaying their behavior.

As a mutual of mine (who themselves identify as a black GNC individual based in US) has put it, those who identify or even appear as Black while identifying as trans-femme or women are subjected to some of the worse kinds of oppression possible in America. Queer women of Color are one of the most susceptible to sexual violence-- especially when they are young, and the darkness of their skin really plays into it. This is transmisogynoir; it is a hard pill to swallow and acknowledge, even if it feels excessive, and its a multilayer of oppression that connects a person's racial identity, gender, and sexuality as targets of discrimination. It's the fact that one is POC, a woman, AND queer that makes one a target--- not just one or the other. You can’t turn a blind eye to this because it happen constantly throughout America's history and American society even today, but you can't simply water it down or downplay it. In fact, many victims of transmisogynoir have no choice but to downplay their experiences because of their Black identities or because they appear too dark to be taken seriously; when they, especially if they are Black, try to hold people in power accountable, these individuals are suddenly labeled aggressive, indignant, etc. and they are further discriminated for attempting to speak up. Dragona downplaying the bullying isn't them just trying to avoid further conflict but a reflection of how many who were in similar situations like Dragona are forced to simply forgive and forget the trauma they have to endure. To downplay it ourselves is reinforcing the narrative that individuals like Dragona in real life should remain silent and endure their harassment rather than rightfully protect themselves and others from it.

Another thing to add is that the way Japan portrays and treats the LGBTQ community, particularly the trans community. In Japan, the process to legally change your gender is complicated and requires a lot of steps that include, but not limited to, being diagnosed with gender identity disorder, proving you have no kids/guardianships, and sterilization. This causes a lot of individuals to be forced to quickly transition as a means of getting their gender recognized, which takes away the time to let them explore at their own pace, and this is due to how the process can lead to hindering career and life opportunities that wouldn't be hindered had they already transitioned or stayed closeted. Many Japanese trans individuals unable to go through the process quickly either remain closeted or move away from Japan to transition at their own pace. So, as a result, the trans community and its struggles is not as noticed compared to outside of Japan. Another thing to add is that the trans community in Japanese media is often portrayed as comedic relief or a gag. Oftentimes, the trans character or character who diverts from gender conformity (i.e cross-dressing, acting more flamboyant) is the butt of the jokes. Some thing to note is that, when Dragona was first introduced, a lot of people thought that Araki put Dragona in simply for comedic purposes. I had people joke about how Dragona is just there because they believed Araki is trolling. Not only that, the racial issues that Japan has often results in jokes towards non-Japanese individuals in media, especially if they are of darker skin color.

So, Araki putting Dragona in these difficult situations is also meant to subvert expectations that his Japanese, and possibly Western, audience may be expecting. The expectation was to laugh and toss Dragona aside as a single-dimensional character, but Araki instead forced us to face the trauma through Dragona's experience head-on. We are made aware of Dragona's situation, how real and difficult the struggle is, and we end up emphasizing with it rather than laughing at it. Through this, we get a glimpse into real life experiences of trans POCs without it being downplayed and have it show how Dragona is a fleshed-out character with importance to the series. As some have put it, this chapter proved that Dragona isn't just a side character but arguably a complex individual on the same level of importance as Jodio. I don't think it would have been easy to have the same impact if another approach was taken.

While talking to others who identify as trans and/or GNC about their thoughts on the chapter, I was told by many of them that, while Dragona's experience hits close to home and was hard to digest, they appreciate seeing it being expressed and hope it will help other people understand their struggles. One noted how the introduction of Smooth Operators with the backstory as empowering, seeing the Stand as a symbol of surviving the trauma that comes with trans discrimination. I do find this a bit telling with how many people online who are against Araki's portrayal barely mention what trans/GNC people have said about it.

My main concern, as well as what I see people have rightfully critiqued, is the excessive trauma reinforcing the fetishization and violent voyeurism towards trans individuals; it also reinforces the problematic narrative that dysmorphia can only happen as a result of trauma and the trans experience can only be full of pain. There's also the issue that Dragona's experience also happened while they were under age and their harassment is similar to that of Lucy. It's a common trope in Western media to put marginalized people into these situations while upping the ante simply for clicks and pleasure, and even worse when the character portrayed is a minor. As I reiterate, it is a very uncomfortable chapter to read and I don't find it enjoyable at the slightest. Just because I understand why it is necessary doesn't mean I condone the approach done. I also understand Araki as a Japanese man can only relate and portray a queer American's experience to an extent. But, at the same time, the exposure was necessary because it gives us the awareness and a voice to trans people that is lacking within media even today. We need to be aware and acknowledge what our BIPOC trans community goes through as a means of being better humans--- and especially our younger community members. We need to make our society safer for them so they can thrive and have the respect they deserve. Oftentimes, that starts with how they are portrayed and how their experiences are portrayed. While it is still a journey and not every representation will be perfect, we can't simply toss it aside and bash those who try to show something realistic just because it is uncomfortable.

I only hope that Araki wrote Dragona and these scenes as a result of doing extensive research and reaching out to actual POC queer individuals, particularly transfemmes/women, to understand their experiences and have their blessings to use their words to shape Dragona. I feel like that would show that Araki was serious about discussing these issues through his characters rather than simply using Dragona's traumatic experience it for entertainment. I have higher expectations for Araki now, knowing that it may not be the last time he shows a character experience harassment and possibly have Dragona be harassed again, so I will keep my eyes open for this.

[macontheweb]

Today, Australia is voting in a referendum on the Voice to Parliament: an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory body, enshrined in our constitution, that will give our First Nations peoples a say on policy that affects them. A Voice would be the first step in Australia reckoning with its history: a history which has so far ignored and silenced — often violently — the voices of the oldest living culture on the planet.

It is not lost on me that I am a non-indigenous person being asked —again — to weigh in on the future of indigenous Australians. I don’t take that lightly, nor am I sure whether a referendum is right for this. I would have felt perfectly comfortable with a Voice being enshrined without my input. Maybe that would have spared my indigenous friends the emotional toll of begging for political recognition.

But it is the way it is, so I’m voting Yes. I’m voting Yes on Wurundjeri land. Stolen land. Land where I live the kind of comfortable life out of reach for many indigenous Australians.

I’m voting Yes because it’s time for real reconciliation.

And I’m voting Yes because here hasn’t been a single argument from the No camp that I could square with doing the right thing. They say the Voice will divide Australia, but Australia is already divided. They say it will give indigenous Australians an unfair advantage. It won’t, but it will hopefully start undoing the years of unfair privilege white Australians have had in deciding their fate. The No camp has told us, “If you don’t know, vote no,” as if that’s an acceptable thing for our country’s civic discourse. As if the answer to not knowing is not to find out, not to ask questions, not to make an informed decision weighed by evidence.

They say indigenous Australians don’t want it. The polls say eighty percent of them do.

In all areas related to quality of life, non-indigenous Australians are leaps and bounds ahead of the people that lived on this land first. Indigenous Australians aren’t living as long as non-indigenous Australians. They are being incarcerated in disproportionate numbers. They don’t have the same access to high quality education. Domestic violence and sexual abuse rates are disproportionately higher in indigenous communities. The economy, housing, employment…the list goes on and on and on and the stats remain dire.

We are already living in a No world. It isn’t working.

It’s time for a change. I don’t know if we’ll get it. I’m fearful that we are too conservative and too selfish a nation to take this one small step, but I hope desperately when I wake up tomorrow we will have said, “Yes. Have a seat at the table. It’s long overdue.”

[dailyanarchistposts]

“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”. It is The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that tells us this. But it is easy to prove that this equality never existed for us, indigenous algerians.

These are our rights, as understood by the bloodthirsty rascals, the greedy pirates who, on the pretext of colonisation, have brought us the “benefits” of their “civilisation”.

They consist in seeing the lands on which we are born, that from father to son we have fertilized of our labour, which gave us enough to live freely and proudly, be monopolized by our “benefactors”.

It is true that we have the “right” to work on these lands that were stolen from us, some 10 to 12 hours per day for a ridiculous wage of 5 Francs. Yet life is expensive in Algeria, very expensive for us and our families.

We have another “right” that the patriotic entrepreneurs of charnel houses do not contest, to the contrary. It is the right to go die on the battlegrounds to defend the oh so generous France. We have, in 1914 and the years that followed, fully “enjoyed” this right. We are even getting armed against our brothers of race whom have the courage to resist against the invader. It is surely so in the name of “the right of a people to self-determination”.

We have to suffer, too without saying a word, from all the aggravations that the fantasy of the administrators and the committees carry out against us.

Italian Fascism is no more odious than the colonial methods used by the civil servants of the French Republic. There is, then, nothing surprising that, their remains starving, having no other alternatives but to beg or slave away like convicts for a meagre pittance, a very large number of natives run away from this “cudgel” [TN: à coups de triques] civilisation.

Many have told themselves that, since they were good at defending France, they had the right to find on its soil, by working, enough to make a living. In fact, the condition of the indigenous living in France is nothing to be compared with the condition of the one that stayed in Algeria.

When he arrives, even if he is jobless, he finds with the Algerians an aid that is hardly ever given in other circles.

He finds himself, obviously, exploited, but less so than what he endured in his country.

Naturally, the big proprietors, the slave traders of Algeria and Tunisia don’t see with a good eye this emigration that offer them large benefits. Also, to stop it, they resort to crooked politicians that have nothing to refuse to them.

And what the National Bloc of Raymond Poincaré didn’t do, the Lefts Bloc of Herriot didn’t fear trying.

Thus we could read recently in Le Quotidien that a regulation will be instituted for the “admission in the métropole of indigenous workers”. This regulation aims at, as declared Mr. Marius Moutet, a member of the committee, “allowing the progressive and judicious penetration of indigenous elements responding, by their physical and professional capacities, to the requirements of the various sectors of the national metropolitan activities”.

“The Committee wanted that the native who comes to work in France would not be exposed to leaving his household, without first being sure he would be able to find in France at least the equivalent of what he abandons.”

The interministerial commission, whose work were chaired by Mr. Duvernoy, director of the Algerian Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, has also decided the creation, in France, of organisations to aid and protect indigenous workers. “From now on, the Algerian and North-African workers, before boarding for France, would have to provide a certificate of commitment from the Ministry of Work, a medical certificate and an ID card with picture, delivered by the mayor or the administrator of the municipality where the indigenous is domiciled.”

“The Ministry of the Interior has decided that these measures will be applied starting October 1st 1924.”

Therefore, from the 1st of October, the administrators will be able to prevent the departure to France of all those they previously boarded when it was a matter of fighting against those they named barbarians. I know, and other will know if they haven’t yet realised, who the barbarians are. They are the hypocritical politicians that are just as good as Mussolini. And to really show this hypocrisy, I assure them, the indigenous leaves his country only because he cannot live there anymore, because there he is oppressed, exploited. He is a slave that they want to keep for those that have stripped him of his native land. What he abandons in Algeria, M. Marius Moutet, “socialist!” deputy, is a bit of misery.

Here is what an Algerian tells you: “Be careful, one day the pariahs will have had enough and will take the guns you taught them to wield, and direct them against their true enemies, in the name of the right to Life, and not, as before, for a criminal so-called motherland.”

[richincolor]

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

Summary: Perry Firekeeper-Birch has always known who she is - the laidback twin, the troublemaker, the best fisher on Sugar Island. Her aspirations won't ever take her far from home, and she wouldn't have it any other way. But as the rising number of missing Indigenous women starts circling closer to home, as her family becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder investigation, and as greedy grave robbers seek to profit off of what belongs to her Anishinaabe tribe, Perry begins to question everything.

In order to reclaim this inheritance for her people, Perry has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. She can only count on her friends and allies, including her overachieving twin and a charming new boy in town with unwavering morals. Old rivalries, sister secrets, and botched heists cannot - will not - stop her from uncovering the mystery before the ancestors and missing women are lost forever.

Sometimes, the truth shouldn't stay buried.

My thoughts: Angeline Boulley has created another fabulous page-turner in her second book. If you've already read Firekeeper's Daughter, this is an excellent follow-up set in the same community, but a few years later. It's a companion rather than a sequel, so it can be read on its own though. I recommend reading both, because they are incredible, but this one can stand on its own.

Perry is character who charms or frustrates those around her. She had me smiling as she teased Luke-Ass and other people around her, but also when she told her little cousin that he has her heart using a fishing analogy. She's sixteen and while she can be laidback, at times she can be incredibly passionate and jump into things full force.

She has many adults around her that are guiding her with advice and yet they give her room to live her life. Several times she is mentally reviewing the exact instructions she's had from her family about how to respond when there is trouble. Missing and murdered indigenous women are often on the minds of her family and community and there are way too many reasons for Perry and others to have all kinds of strategies for when they are vulnerable.

Perry has obviously grown up knowing about the risks to those of her gender, skin color, and culture, but as she works in her internship, she also learns about how ancestral remains have gone missing throughout the years. Not only have they been stolen, even with laws in place requiring their return, few have been recovered. Perry's heart is broken when she meets the remains of the Warrior Girl being kept by a non-native institution. For anyone unaware of the issues around the repatriation of ancestral remains, this book may be very illuminating. For some readers, this will not be new information but there is a great list of resources at the end that may be interesting for anyone. There are multiple moments that speak to the emotional work that Perry and others are having to do when seeing these items and hearing from elders about the losses. There's an acknowledgement of the harms that this continues to do to the descendants of those people.

Throughout the book, the characters are central even though there is a lot happening. What I appreciate about Angeline Boulley's writing is that there are intriguing mysteries to untangle, but beyond that, there are many layered characters and she makes me want to meet them and spend more time with them.

Recommendation: Get it soon. This book is tagged as a mystery or thriller, but it is also a book filled with love. It's about identity, community, the continued affects of colonialism, and so much more. This is a book that will stay with readers for a long time.

Extras:

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company Pages: 396 Availability: On shelves now Review copy: Final copy via library

[catsnuggler]

I sometimes wonder what "home" means to me.

Is "home" my family? Who counts, when I'm closer with friends who live all across the world, who I might not even see in my lifetime, than my biological family, some of whom I am close to, others of whom I love but in such a broken way?

Is my home in the lands of the Snohomish, or on the lands of the Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce? I am of none of those people at all, but I have lived on their ancestral homelands. I was born in the former, raised on the latter. Lands which have been stolen. Lands which remain stolen. Lands which have been under attack for centuries by white people; people who do not naturally exist. Before the 15th century, there were (I'm speaking in broad terms here, and not all of these existed as their own states yet/at this point) Romanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans (well, again, they were from sooooo many different states and usually identified more with those little states than a broader "German" identity), French people, English people, Scots, Welsh people, Spaniards, Portuguese people - I could go on and on and on. White people came into existence by depriving themselves, being deprived of these identities, or often both, for the sake of forming a united front against Indigenous peoples protecting their lands and enslaved Africans fighting for their freedom.

Is my home Ulster, Ireland, where my Ulster Scots ancestors did a practice run of colonialism against their fellow Gaels before then coming to "The New World"? Is my home the Scottish borderlands, where their ancestors lived, raided, pillaged, warred, robbed before being sent to Ulster to do so for the crown? Not that they had much choice in such a conflict-ridden land... or is my home in England? Germany? Switzerland? Wales?...

In the end, even as I feel little attachment to the land I live now, there are fires here which started with my ancestors, or people who might as well have been, anyway, and they're fires I haven't done anything about yet. Besides, my partner does have ancestry from this land - well, the lands of the Yoeme, but that's still on Khéya Wíta, just further South. They're too distant to fully reconnect, to ever join, but... their Anglo side abandoned her from the beginning. She has always been connected only with her mother's side, the Mexican and Yoeme side. This land is literally their Motherland. I love my partner, they love me, and even if I had the money to abandon this continent, it wouldn't be right. I wouldn't abandon my love.

I don't know if I will ever feel at home. Even so, some people do, even of their home is under attack. I figure I have the responsibility to help them defend their home. I may not feel at home, and maybe I never will feel at home, but I do live here. And it's about time I get on my feet and learned to put out those fires.

[galleryyuhself]

Opinion on the changing Coat of Arms

Kevin Jared Hosein writes on Facebook...

The concept of the ships, to me (though not these particular ships), meant that the majority of our ancestors were brought here, either by force of persuasion. The captains of those ships never meant for them to form a civilisation -- yet here their descendants are. Strangers in a new land, each carrying pieces of something broken. Something older, something lost. The people were meant to be dehumanised, scattered, erased, forgotten. But they didn’t fade away. Instead, they built something strange, something that shouldn’t exist, a patchwork of stolen histories and borrowed lives. An imperfect history, as history is.

The captains, those distant figures in the haze, never imagined that their cargo would become more than just cargo. The ships positioned below the hummingbird like three seeds. Seeds planted in malice need not bear fruits of the same wickedness.

A coat of arms is a story stitched from emblems. The ships are part of this particular one's story. The ships, the hills, it is why this island is called Trinidad. But I'm not here to debate erasure of history or sentiment or anything like that. Not even aesthetic, not yet. Focus on story, and you would see how this would've benefited from a full top-down redesign to incorporate the pan motif. Why even stop at the pan then, with the colonial helmet still sitting so ostentatiously? Just a thought -- imagine this same helmet and mantle crushed at the feet of our national birds, plumage and all. Without the ships, what is the purpose of the wheel, the hills, the waves on the channel? A clumsily edited story, it is shaping up to be!

As for aesthetic now -- at a first glance, the ungainly placement of the sticks made me think it was melting. Drooling, even. A closer look and it looks like it stands on comically tiny legs. Something we know the pan doesn't, physically and metaphorically. The elements of a good logo or coat of arms should be recognisable in all sizes and formats. Envision the unnatural sheen and those pan-sticks embossed on your passport -- how do they look there? Even as I look at it now, it makes me think of doubles. Not our kind, no. The poor facsimile of one you might see in the BBC or New York Times.

But I speak as if this were all some attempt at removing colonial vestiges. It is not. It is a halfway dream, suspended between intention and inaction. No, this was never about colonial vestiges. Will the coat of arms become like a tree at the top of a politically charged nature hike? Before you leave, take out your knife and etch onto it, _______ WAS HERE. Then below it, _______ WAS HERE TOO. And on, and on. It remains true, for many nations, that a coat of arms is as much a burden as it is a boast.

Not all legacies are blessings. It may redefine the memory of you. It may turn your ambition into a cautionary tale. It can be twisted by the hands of time. It may even one day turn you into an answer to a multiple choice question in a Guardian SEA Practice Test. What was the true catalyst of the change? A daydream, a conversation, an existential dread? The answer will be omitted from the key.

Today, in Piarco Airport's arrivals hall stands a replica of a fascinating mural. The Inherent Nobility of Man. You'd know it by the indigenous winged man. Carlisle Chang did the original. Chang also co-designed the coat of arms. Not many people know that Chang's original design had a tatu (armadillo) at the top of the helm instead of the palm. The domineering position of one of God's armoured creature as if to say in spite of all of our colonisation and settlers, the land is sovereign onto itself, not man. Both tell a story; colonial, anti-colonial, almost like two sides of the a coin. The original mural was put up in 1962. In 1976, the Government allowed it to be destroyed. In interviews, Chang seems too morose to elaborate. "Why? There was no reason given." The real answer has also been omitted from the key. I imagine he didn't follow the brief.

Of course, we don't know the jeweller's brief (as a professional, she would know how to decline a job), and this was not her only submission, she claims. In fact, no one yet knows who approved this iteration, not even she. This is the fault of many. All themselves captains in the distant haze. The jeweller has now proclaimed that she does not care about the public she was designing for. She will one day die. The anonymous person or committee in the Office of the Prime Minister who selected this version will one day die. Keith Rowley and Kamla Persad-Bissessar and members of Parliament will one day die. The President that facilitates its assent will one day die. The rest of us might very well be stuck with this for decades.

[sarah-dipitous]

Hellsite Nostalgia Tour 2023 Day 340

The Timeless Children

“The Timeless Children”

Plot Description: the cybermen are on the march. The last remaining humans are hunted down. Lies are exposed, truths are revealed. And for the Doctor, nothing will ever be the same.

The difference between Twelve and Missy vs Thirteen and the Master is SO heartbreaking. This isn’t to say that she SHOULD trust him, but Twelve and Missy were working toward something before Simm!Master fucked it up for them

Will I care at all about the cybermen plot? Probably not, the dynamic between the Doctor and the Master is so much more interesting to me

There’s something very sad wet cat about this Master, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe he’s just SO DESPERATE for Thirteen’s attention and recognition

Graham wants to disguise them all as cybermen to escape??

He’s so theatrical in his gesturing. I’m obsessed

Is he just hungry for ANYONE’S attention?? The way he looked after telling the lead cyberman he wants to be thought of as their new best friend

He’s also just absolutely insane

Ok ok ok, I haven’t completely given up on the other plots this episode. Graham telling Yaz she’s the best person he knows is bringing me to tears. The way he’s so proud of her and inspired by her 🥹

He’s being so Touya coded right now. He just needs a larger audience.

The lead cyberman checking the suits our friends took over was actually really stressful

Is he telling us that an indigenous Gallifrean basically abducted a time lord child during her travels in space…and then do the time lords just…kind of spread out from there?? An invasive species? Why is this what we’re doing??

Ryan celebrating too early about defeating some cybermen as more show up behind him. Oh sweetie

One death particle to get rid of all organic life??

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh noooooo. Why is the Master subtly pleading for his life while trying to make it seem like he can make the cybermen’s vision for the future go from good to great WHILE BEING CHOKED DOING THINGS FOR ME???

This kid’s life SUCKS. They’re just a science experiment for this woman. She’s literally studying them like a bug

So the ability to regenerate was artificially created in time lords?? They took that ability from that one kid

I’m kind of hoping this gets retconned, the Doctor being the Timeless Child. It really cheapens River’s sacrifice if she didn’t need to do it because it seems the Doctor gets unlimited regenerations. She’s had all 13 of these plus the six or so we saw in a flashback and however many between then and the beginning of classic who

I wonder how much laser tag Ryan played as a kid. This seems like a skill he would have picked up there…or maybe first person shooter video games

Hey, uh, the Master? You doin okay, bud? You seem to REALLY want that death particle to go off and you be right fucking next to it

Oh my god oh my god oh my god “you know what I find the most infuriating? you always behaved like you were different, like you were special. And you were. You can see why I’m angry” GOD if he’s not being the most Touya coded right fucking now

Oh shit, the guy I thought was the lead cyberman was actually the Doctor? Maybe??

Well that’s a horrifying reality. The Master killed all the time lords but kept their bodies and now has upgraded them to time lord/cyberman hybrids. The armor absolutely fucks though. Regular cyberman for a lot but there’s some circular gallifrean around the ears and in the metal crests like the time lords’ high collars

Oh future Doctor is here in the time lord matrix. But perhaps she IS a past Doctor since we learned that she has so many regenerations that have been stolen from her memory

Oh okay so she WILL find a different way. Like, I was getting worried when she was talking about killing all the new cybermen and the Master with the death particle, but now that she’s gonna die with them, no she won’t

I mean…but the Master hasn’t even been Rasputin yet so he’ll be okay

Wait wait wait. How did the Judoon just board the TARDIS???? They just threw the Doctor in jail forever?? For what???

[into-control]

Laurens such a fucking race traitor and so are you. "Oh waaahhh I'm white I hate being white. all white people are colonizers and evil. I wish I wasn't white. white people are inferior. white people are harmful. I'm going to spend all my time virtue signalling to other races about how much I hate being white". Like how about you actually just accept you're white and be proud of your heritage. Every single person had some fucked up ancestors that doesn't mean white people are bad. Do y'all really think black and brown people's ancestors were angels? No I'm sure they were racist misogynists too but you don't see them whining about how they think their races are evil. Imagine how bad she's making all of her white fans feel just coz she's got some weird guilt complex for something she never did

I'm honestly so angry she always acts like white people are the most awful people on earth. I hate that. It's not fair. Why is it my fault what my fucking ancestors did. Oh so I'm evil. Maybe I should just die then. Why don't we just wipe white people off the face of the earth. And you know what??? I GUARANTEE YOU. that there would still be racism. It would be the remaining races being racist to each other. But sure white people are evil and should be shamed of our race when others can be proud of theirs. No. I'm unfollowing her she's clearly doesn't care about her white fans

————

you clearly have like,, no understanding of anything about this situation. sorry to burst your privileged bubble but when it comes to race white people kind of ARE the worst. like, objectively. i’m not too knowledgeable on other places in the world but the united states and canada are entirely built on the oppression of black, indigenous, and other people of colour, caused by white people. our heritage is erasing people’s histories on purpose. so many black americans and canadians don’t know where they came from because white people destroyed their family trees, and indigenous people are disconnected from their roots because white people forced them to conform to our standards in residential schools (the last one closed 24 years ago in canada, so no this isn’t just on our ancestors). not only were our countries built on oppression but white people continue to uphold the same oppressive system today and claim that it’s not a problem anymore. redlining, racial profiling, the industrial prison complex, etc etc.. yes there would still be racism if we all suddenly died off but WE are the ones who hold actual oppressive power over them because of how our society was built. there is a colonial aspect to living on stolen land and dictating how those who’s bloodlines were here far before ours are allowed to use their own land.

if you had any shred of understanding of this subject, lauren’s posts about white people wouldn’t make you angry at her, it would make you angry that things are the way they are and want to get involved and fight against this oppressive system instead of contributing to it. you would also understand the difference between taking pride in being any other race but white and taking pride in being white. black people for example take pride in being black because of all the oppression they have survived for the past few hundred years. taking pride in being white doesn’t mean a damn thing other than white supremacy. we as a race haven’t been through shit because of another race. it’s like saying “what about straight pride” but worse.

[whiterosebrian]

Heritage

I oppose Folkism. I understand Folkism to represent a very ugly parody of the pre-Christian religions that neopagans have been working to revive. I understand neopagan paths to be open. When the old gods call Black or Asian followers, we should let those people answer the gods’ calls.

The reason why I made those statements up-front is that I’m about to delve into a topic whose discussion will require much nuance. I’ve made an effort to write this in such a way as to keep my intentions consistently clear. However, there could still be a possibility of taking many of the following statements out of context, whether by Folkists wanting validation, mainstream people who don’t know much about neopaganism, or Christian-Right propagandists. I’m about to discuss old spiritual heritages of people of European descent.

I may need to touch upon what Folkism is before going on with that discussion. Folkism, in the most basic sense, is the notion that certain old European practices and religions are the sole provinces of their associated cultural groups, whether Celtic or Slavic or, most notoriously, Germanic. It derives from the Volkisch movement which purported to revive Germanic traditions and the people’s connections to their lands. The Thule Society, in particular, laid the groundwork for Nazism. The Nazi regime retained the occultic influences—though I should note they weren’t the dominant strain and the party rose to power by appealing first and foremost to Christian culture (which is yet another historical fact that raises hard questions of what Christianity looks like in the real world).

Today’s adherents of Folkism exploit the discourse around cultural appropriation, though in a mendacious and vulgarized form. Sometimes well-meaning allies do unintentionally vulgarize said discourse as well. One part of appropriation is swiping elements of other people’s cultures willy-nilly—though there are two other key aspects that should be kept in mind. First is the fact that elements of cultures are often taken with little acknowledgement of or gratitude towards the originators. More importantly, there is a context of colonization, marginalization, and erasure.

Even if you haven’t followed me for a while or read my journal entries before, you may be aware of the elements of Asian, African, Native American, and even Jewish spiritualities within the New Age movement. It’s quite clear that a number of people, disenchanted with historic Christian culture for any number of reasons (including extremely serious ones), look elsewhere to find genuine spirituality. Actually, those trends were also present in Europe during the peak of modern imperialism in the nineteenth century, evidently influencing today’s New Age movement.

To my understanding, Buddhists and Hindus are very willing to share elements of their spiritualties—but too often those elements are half-understood, ripped out of context, and watered down anyway. Native Americans have seen their spiritual practices outlawed until fairly recently, which is why they resent those practices being commercialized or taught outside the proper contexts. The Jewish people have faced persecution for many centuries and similarly seen their mysticism suppressed—and they resent mangled or incomplete versions of Kabbalah floating around metaphysical circles.

You may recall the interest that I actually once had in Kabbalah. I did genuinely want to learn from the Jewish people. I had abandoned Catholicism and wanted to learn from its Jewish roots (though I probably underestimated how far Christianity deviated). I was actually ready to start delving more deeply into Kabbalah after reading introductory texts of admittedly varying degrees of quality. I was under the mistaken impression that Kabbalah was now being opened up (though in fact Kabbalah is still considered a closed practice, due mainly to requiring an intensive grounding in Jewish scripture and practice). However, some Jewish users on Tumblr and PillowFort convinced me to rethink my interest. I soon decided that Judaism in general wasn’t for me, much less Jewish mysticism. I didn’t think I could even devote myself to the religious law (however different movements within Judaism interpreted it).

I also had some interest in my own Northern European heritage. That is part of what led me to examine Heathenry in more detail. What finally led me to devote myself to the Heathen path was animism, or a relationship with nature as well as the spirits within and the very powers of life. Sometimes, spiritual practitioners of color heartily exhort white seekers to look into their own ethnic heritages to find their own gods, medicines, rites, and modalities. What ultimately prompted this essay is a video from a healer who goes by “heart of Hamsa” on Instagram; they (I’m using the apparent preferred pronoun) are of Vietnamese and French descent.

They speak of the need for greater respect towards and gratitude for Asian practices. They speak of how they delved into their own heritage. They touch upon the distinctions among cultures and peoples—most certainly not in any exclusionary or purist sense, but in the sense of deepened understanding and appreciation. They speak of a need to give back to the peoples who inspire us, especially in light of colonization, with Vietnam as a prominent example that they cite.

Hamsa goes on to speak of white people who are ashamed or fragile (often understandably, giving rise to the “white guilt” that neo-Nazis maliciously mock) and chase after what they view exotic and foreign, only to fail to do justice to reiki and ayahuasca and the like. They essentially ask people to restart by looking into their own ancestors and uncovering histories. They exhort viewers to set roots and share their own inheritances before looking outside, much less making smorgasbords. Basically, Hamsa asks people to remember who they are and be themselves first and foremost.

How does that apply to a man of Northern European descent born on a land that was stolen from indigenous people? Occasional tweeters will remark that white people have no culture except for banal capitalism and arrogant colonization. Irish, Italian, and German immigrants eventually assimilated into the hegemonic American culture after facing their share of prejudice (my father’s family actually used to be named Koch before becoming Cook during the First World War). The old Christendom may have initially been a union of different Christianized peoples, but at some point (I can’t say exactly when) it became a more-or-less homogenized bloc of Christian colonizers. If even the Irish faced domination at the hands of Englishmen, the Christian European powers were sure to dominate other peoples in worse ways.

Hamsa does speak of “blood” and “bloodline”, which admittedly can raise hackles for good reason. Folkish neopagans also speak of “blood” as in “blood and soil”. Obviously, as you can see from the above context, Hamsa is using “blood” in a subtly though crucially different way. Perhaps, then, Folkism is a distortion of a truth—that truth being a rootedness in personal bloodline and heritage. The kind of “meta-genetics” that people like Stephen McNallen and Stephen Flowers promote is indeed Nazi-leaning bunk—otherwise, learning about the pre-Christian past would not be so difficult or involve so much ambiguity and guesswork. I can accept that white supremacy has influenced the pagan revival to some extent, particularly in its early stages. Did the original Volkisch movement deal with the trauma of enforced Christianization (and the later rise of an increasingly ruthless capitalism) in a very unhealthy way? I don’t have enough historical education to really answer that.

In any case, I’m very pleased to see neopagans seriously work on disentangling that influence. Improved historical scholarship in recent times has been a blessing. Perhaps European-Americans who take the time to learn from such scholarship as well as experienced practitioners might find many boons. It’s possible that the old gods of Northern Europe called me back into their embrace. Indeed, as I began to seriously consider training myself to be a magician working with Odin and Freya, I began to get a sense of a homecoming. My Scandinavian, German blood, and Anglo-Saxon bloodlines ultimately aren’t major factors, but they still are factors in a homecoming. While figuring out a spiritual path, I increasingly wanted to work with divine power as a magician—it turned out that I wouldn’t do so through Kabbalah but through animistic Heathenry.

The question of what a settler is supposed to do among the many settler communities on a continent stolen from its original inhabitants remains. I most certainly have a responsibility to those who lack what privileges I have. I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid the indigenous communities, especially those within the Great Lakes, the region of Turtle Island where I live. For that matter, I hope to find stronger opportunities to aid other communities.

In general, I understand a need to participate in the work of decolonization in some manner. I understand a need to take part in breaking down what has become whiteness. Those who think that they are being broad-minded in taking from so many cultures (and I would have also thought so even a few years ago), it seems, unintentionally contribute to colonization and white privilege. Maybe I will start learning from other peoples after gaining a very firm grounding in a revived Germanic magic, though maybe they will tell me to keep up with that. There are indeed many different paths for people to take to the divine. Some of them are closed (or at least require formal initiation) for very good reasons. Kabbalists and Jewish mages deny that Judaism is for everyone—they might speak of other gods who call to their peoples while the presence of the supreme Godhead remains with the gentiles. People like Hamsa speak of honoring and reinvigorating diversity among the human shards of divinity within today’s world. Thus, demagogues who fearmonger over the One World Religion for the New World Order show themselves to be paranoid fools. There certainly isn’t a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world!

I will take my time in building relations with Freya and Odin, contemplating the runes, training myself to connect to Yggdrasil, and looking forward to meeting elves and various ancestors who have walked my path before. I hope to be of great service as a Germanic magician among the Great Lakes. I also wish to gradually build up stories of diverse people seeking truth, goodness, beauty, joy, and spirituality as a novelist (and possible comic artist). I struggle with lethargy and a troubled heart, but I do believe that I have a calling. You are all welcome to support me and, perhaps better, find your own mystic paths.

[downwiththeficness]

In the Bond-Chapter 5

Summary: Lilah often wished she’d never said yes to working with the Gecko brothers—usually while dodging gunfire. At no time was she regretting that decision more than when she’s hanging upside down from the ceiling, staring down a group of hungry culebras and one (1) extremely powerful sun god.

Word Count: ~3,700

Warnings: None

A/N: This is an AU of my Story In the Blood, which can be read here. Basically, this fic explores what would have happened if Lilah had met up with Geckos before she met Brasa.

Taglist: @symbiont13

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Lilah sat at a conference table, hands at her temples, groaning. The meeting was going nowhere. There had been so much goddamned bickering in the last hour that Lilah was tempted just to get up and walk out to see if they would even notice. The fucking testosterone in this room was thick enough to choke her.

They’d been arguing on and off for hours, save for a few breaks that Lilah had mandated when the urge to either bludgeon them to death or to pee arose. Every little thing had to be discussed, debated, twisted every which way. Nothing was simple, especially not when it came to the territory assigned to each side.

“Alright!” She yelled, finally having had enough. “Let’s just go over this again.”

Standing, Lilah leaned over the map.  The surface was covered by solid, clear plastic, onto which they were outlining territories with dry erase markers.  The current argument centered around the delineation of land around a fertile riverbed.

“Okay,” she grunted, “We aren’t planting crops, we’re just trying to figure out what land we’re going to be responsible for.” She put her hand over the area on the map, giving her friend a meaningful look, “We don’t need it, Seth.”

Making a derisive sound, Seth held up his hand, “Hold your horses. This river cuts through our liquor supply chain. We need access to the highway over there.”

Brasa shrugged, having leaned back from the table, “No one is saying you can’t import your liquor. Your horses will be safe.”

Lilah felt her eyes roll, couldn’t keep the sigh from escaping her lips, “He wasn’t talking about literal horses.”

Acting as if he hadn’t heard her, Seth barreled forward, “Yeah, but let’s say things get tense between us.  You could cut off our supply just like that.” He snapped his fingers to emphasize his point. “No, we’re going to extend out past the river and over the road.”

“An extra fifty miles,” Brasa drawled, “For an uninterrupted supply chain.”

“Correct,” Seth answered, a smug little smirk on his mouth.

As he eyed Seth, Lilah could feel the barest brush of warmth across her hands. Reflexively, she drew them back, closer to the safety of her body. The heat dissipated as Brasa stood, leaning his weight into his palms as he braced them on the table.

Like the rest of him, Brasa’s hands were large, the fingers spreading wide over the wood. Lilah noted how the gloves he was wearing stretched tight across the backs of them. She wondered, not for the first time, why he wore them.

“Then, I want the desert land here,” he pointed to a swath of empty land, “And here.”

Seth considered it before giving a nod. Lilah marked it out on the map with the coordinated colors she’d chosen before the meeting began.

“Wait,” Seth said, and Lilah’s jaw clenched, “What would you want with a couple hundred square miles of empty land?”

Brasa lifted a brow, “Are we holding more horses?”

“Forget the horses,” Seth bit out with a wave of his hand, “No one willingly chooses to own land like this.”

“Is that so?”

Lilah did not like the way he said that. A question wrapped around a veiled barb, wrapped in ridicule. She glanced at Seth to see if he caught the undertones in the words. He hadn’t. She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved.

“There is a group of my people who have made camp there,” Brasa explained lightly.

Seth looked unmoved, “You don’t want us going out there and doing population control.”

Lip curling, Brasa replied, “Is that what you call what you were doing? Looked a lot like chaos to me.”

Without blinking, Seth shot back, “Well, its not our main bag, alright? This shit is new to us, since your people came along and infected my brother.”

And, there they were, talking in circles around the thing that made negotiating such an arduous task. Seth would never forgive Brasa for the hell he’d put them through, for the uncrossable gulf that now existed between him and his brother. Fighting with Richie about it only made things worse, and Seth was resorting to striking out at the only other available target.

“This isn’t the time for this,” Lilah edged, fingers tightening on the marker.

“When is the time?” Seth nearly yelled, “We started out killing them and now we’re marking out territories and writing fucking policies and procedures together.”

Lilah drew in a calming breath, “This is business, Seth.”

She’d explained it to him several times over. They needed the cooperation of Brasa and his people. There were just too many factions, too many rogue culebras to hunt down all by themselves. It would take scouring the land every day for years to make that happen. Brasa had already assured them that anyone getting blood at their sites was vetted intensely. Anyone who broke the primary rule and killed humans without regard for the safety of the group was eliminated.

Seth looked at her with ire, “Fuck business.”

“Yes,” Lilah countered with a sneer, “Fuck business. Fuck ending a war. Fuck peace.” She sat back in her chair with a huff, “You want to keep fighting forever? Guess what? You don’t have forever. He does.” She pointed at Brasa, “He has all the time in the world to wait you out, and he’s offering a solution—now, not later.”

Seth went quiet, jaw working. His fingers drummed on the table, eyes cutting.

Lilah saw the crack in his resolve and kept talking, “This sucks. It all sucks. Ironing out details fucking sucks.” She tapped her fingers on the map, “But these details are going to save lives. Possibly yours and mine. Let’s just get this done so we can get back to shit we used to do, the fun shit.”

There was a heaviness in the air as she trailed off, her expression urging Seth for some sort of compromise.  She was being honest when she said she wanted to get back to what she was good at. Lilah had been itching for a job for months, had actually stooped low enough to snag a pair of sunglasses at the gas station just to satisfy the restlessness in her hands. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to end out figuring out who the richest person in the country was and rob them blind.

Brasa spoke, his voice piqued with interest, “What did you do before...population control?”

Seth cut a look at him that was both suspicious and angry, “We’re thieves. I run point, Richie is the box man, Lilah monitors with tech.”

“That is fortunate,” Brasa said as he sat, with a little smile that was far too easy for Lilah’s taste, “I happen to need a few items stolen for me.”

Lilah leaned her head on her head, motioning for him to continue. She was intrigued by the idea that he would be interested in contracting with them. A job was a tasty idea, at the moment, and found that she didn’t much care that it would be Brasa that would be directing them.

“As you might be aware, relics are often stolen from indigenous people and either put on display in a museum or kept in a private collection. I’d like some of those relics back.”

Lilah’s brows lifted. That was certainly not what she had expected him to say. The idea had some merit, though. Lilah’s favorite jobs were museums. So many pretty things that definitely needed a new home.

Seth considered it, “We’re not a cheap crew.”

True.

Nodding, Brasa simply said, “I have money.”

Definitely true. Every inch of Brasa’s office and the bar adjacent screamed money at her in an understated way. As old as he was, there was no denying that he likely had a cache of assets squirreled away.

Lilah looked back and forth between them, already calculating cost, labor, and expenses. Depending on what he wanted, she could potentially negotiate a hefty profit. And, if there happened to be something else in the museum that caught her fancy—bonus.

“Say we do this job,” Seth began, slouching in his seat, “And you pay us—and, we iron out all these details,” he gestured to the map. “Is that going to be it?”

“It?”

“Yeah. Or, are we going to have a dual relationship, here. Both contractor and partner.”

Lilah was actually a little impressed that Seth not only knew how dual relationships worked, but also applied it to their unique situation. She turned her attention to Brasa, curious to hear his response.

“I can contract others, if you like. But, I like to work with people I know, people that I...trust to have a stake in things going well for them.”

Logical. Practical. Efficient. Lilah was quickly learning how skilled Brasa could be when he wanted something done. He might want whatever these relics were back in his possession, but she wasn’t stupid enough to dismiss the fact that he was creating yet another tie between them, anchoring her nearby with every task they agreed to take on. It wasn’t possible to deny his motivations any longer. Denial wouldn’t do her any good. She was undecided on how she felt about it.

Seth remained silent, watching, waiting.  Lilah was holding her breath.

Brasa’s eyes narrowed, “I will give you the river, and the connecting highway from here,” he pointed, “to here. In lieu of payment, of course. You make take your horses wherever you like within that boundary.”

Mildly offended, Lilah cut in, “In lieu of payment, but you will cover expenses.  Air fare, hotel stays, food, and equipment.”

His attention, when it turned to her, was keen.  Though his expression did not change, there was a twinkle of laughter in his eyes, possibly pride, as well, “Done.”

“What if,” Seth began, “We took this deal, and our horses, and added this area, too.”

He pointed to the desert Brasa had originally bargained for.  It was surrounded by enemy territory, across the river they’d just gained, with no inherent resources. Lilah glared at him, knowing he was needling his opponent. The man just couldn’t help it, consequences be damned.

“Well,” Brasa responded levelly, “I’d say that you might have your horses, but you’d be isolated, alone, and on the wrong side of the river.”

Seth conceded the point with a nod of his head, “Not a fan of sand, anyways. Unless its a beach. Beaches, I can do.”

Unmoved by the sentiment, Brasa simply replied, “I will keep the desert.”

Lilah blinked slowly, and when Seth made no move to argue, she asked “So its settled, then?”

Both of them indicated in the positive, with Seth saying, “There’s one thing I don’t understand.”

“One thing?” Lilah commented, though she didn’t expect him to respond. He’d started on a tangent, and getting him back on track would be difficult.  Better to let him roll through his thought process.

“You’ve got a whole group of culebras that you’re feeding, right?”

Brasa nodded, though his expression had shuttered.

“How are you doing that?”

A valid question that she had figured out not longer after these meetings had started. Lilah cut in, trying to head off any insult he might inadvertently blurt out, “He’s having it shipped in.”

“From where?” Seth asked, hands gesturing widely. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in kind of a food desert, here.  Literally and figuratively.”

Without an answer to his question, Lilah looked to Brasa, brows lifted. She was curious enough about his process to let the question stand.

Cocking his head to the side, Brasa licked his lips, “I run a rather complex medical supplies company. We ship all over the country. Part of that business is blood donation.”

Seth’s mouth thinned, “You’re stealing blood.”

Brasa huffed, “We transport most of it to where it needs to go. Call it a finder’s fee.”

“What about the sick people who need it?”

Where was all this compassion coming from? Lilah wondered. Although far from heartless, Seth didn’t usually care this much about the people he ripped off. Why should this be any different?

“Would you rather we feed on the humans in the area?” Brasa’s voice was low, dangerous. Lilah could feel the offense, as if it were her own.

“No.”

“Alright, then.”

Sensing that the conversation had come to an impass, Lilah gathered up her paperwork, “I’m going to get this all formatted and polished for both of your signatures. Shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

“Great,” Seth muttered as he rose, “Let’s get out of here.”

***

Later, when her eyes started crossing from staring at the computer too long, Lilah shut down her laptop and sat it on her nightstand. Rubbing at her face, she yawned and settled against the headboard. Furtively, she glanced to the side, her hand already reaching for the candle she’d tucked away. After checking that the door was closed (despite having closed and locked it a few hours before), Lilah lifted the lid and inhaled deeply.

Coffee. Caramel.

A little too quickly, Lilah replaced the lid and set it back in its little hideaway. Embarrassed, she crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling.  Lilah was feeling things she hadn’t really ever felt, not since she’d been in high school. And, even then, it was never this intense. She managed to get through their meetings solely because there was always something else to focus on. Every one on one interaction with him left her feeling frazzled and lightheaded. She’d stolen rare artifacts with less trouble.

In this business, Lilah had what most would call a late start.  She’d had a normal childhood, had gone through high school and done the work thing for a bit. Lilah had even sat in a cubicle, bored out of her mind. It wasn’t until she’d met a chop shop owner named Chewie that she’d been introduced to theft.  First, cars, then she’d set her eyes on higher things—art, diamonds, one time she managed to steal a yacht.

It had been a steady rotation of teams that were well-established in their own right, but never did more than a few jobs together before they split to keep the heat down. Lilah had spent almost a decade running in those circles before she’d run into Seth at a dive bar south of the border.  He’d hit on her, laughed when she’d knocked him off his barstool, and offered her a job.

And, here she sat. Hip deep in a relationship she didn’t understand and brokering a deal between her friends and the people they’d taught her to fear. Sneering at the course of her own thoughts, Lilah pushed her feet under the covers and turned off the light. It took longer than she wanted to get to sleep.

***

Oh, fuck, the bed was comfortable.  Lilah turned over, burying her nose in the pillow and kicking out her legs.  With a sigh, she settled back into the mattress that she was pretty sure was more expensive than her car. So comfortable was she that Lilah could be forgiven for taking a little longer than normal to become aware of another body in the bed with her.

She took a few seconds to assess and decide on what she was going to do, which was pretty much nothing.  Eyes opening, she waited for them to adjust to the warm light emanating from the lamp sitting on the nightstand. Cast in shadow, Lilah recognized the slope of Brasa’s profile. His eyes were closed, but she couldn’t tell if he was sleeping.

Her fingers curled with the urge to reach out and touch, her brain a little foggy from sleep. Lips parting, she breathed, lids falling to half mast Lilah let it roll over her tongue. She had to clench her jaw to stifle a pleased moan.

Lashes fluttering, Brasa opened his eyes, his head rolling to the side on the pillow. He looked her over calmly, unsurprised that she’d somehow ended up in his bed. Lilah, however, had questions.

“Is this real?”

His mouth quirked, “Does it have to be?”

She started to answer, and then stopped. Did it have to be? Lilah wasn’t sure which she preferred. When they were together, she felt excited and eager, even when she was outwardly annoyed. When they were apart, she struggled to reconcile the two versions of him that she knew to be true. With barely a thought, he’d eviscerated his opponents, hands tearing them into literal pieces. And then there was the way he was looking at her right now—all softness, all quiet affection.

Lilah’s silence continued, the space between them spreading thin with her indecision. Brasa shifted slowly to his side, lifting up onto his elbow so that he was looking down at her. His body was cut in half by lamplight, eyes too bright to be merely natural reflection.

Lilah’s skin drew up tight around the curves of her body as she worked to keep her gaze on his. Every inch of her seemed to be viscerally aware of him, responding to the smallest movement. Her nerves sizzled with his nearness.

He tilted his head to the side, eyes tracing the contours of her cheekbones, her neck, and shoulders. Lilah swallowed, disconcerted by the scrutiny, but unable to think of any way to break it. He studied her as if he’d never look at her again, memorizing details with tender care.

Finally, when she couldn’t take the silence anymore, she said, “How am I here?”

Brasa lifted a shoulder, “We had so little time together last night. Perhaps we needed more.”

She didn’t know what to do with that. Next question, then.

“You sleep during the day.”

Not really a question, more of a statement, but she waited for his answer nonetheless.

“Sometimes,” he replied, taking her change in subject in stride, “I need less sleep than most.”

“Why?”

He smiled, “I am very old. We need to sleep less, to feed less, as we age.”

Lilah had heard a little about this from Richie, who’d lamented that it took so long to build up a tolerance to going long periods without feeding.  And, she knew Richie only slept a few hours a night. She wondered just how often Brasa would need to sleep, given how much older he was. Lilah was no longer surprised at his efficiency with getting his projects together. If she could miss a few meals or miss a few night’s sleep every once in a while, she could get a hell of a lot done.

“That’s a nice perk,” she commented lightly, “When I go too long without eating, I get grumpy.”

Nodding, Brasa reached out and traced the pad of a finger over her shoulder and down her arm to her wrist, “I will keep this in mind and endeavor to keep you well fed.”

Would she do the same? He hadn’t mentioned that she had taken his blood without giving any in return. Whenever Lilah thought about it too deeply, she always came back to the same line of thought—his bite. She had tried to do a little covert research about the venom, but only found a few vague references to ‘donors’ seeking it out. Venom, it seemed, could be a popular drug in certain circles.

“I’m sorry that we left so quickly,” Lilah murmured rolling her wrist to place her hand over his, “I know that I didn’t...fulfill my end of our agreement.”

Twice. Two interactions in a row, she hadn’t. He hadn’t brought it up, but the disparity between what she’d promised and what she’d done nagged at her. She didn’t like to be made a liar.

Brasa’s brows lifted, “Are you afraid I’ll tell them?”

“No,” she replied quickly, “I just don’t want you to think I’m avoiding it.”

He smiled flirtatiously, “Are you offering now?”

Eyes widening, Lilah’s mouth parted, voice silent as her brain stumbled over forming a reply, “This is a dream. Is—is that even possible?”

He laughed, a real laugh. It made his face, so predisposed to severity, brighten in such a way that he fairly glowed in the dim light. Lilah felt her breath catch in the back of her throat, struck by just how goddamned pretty he was to look at.

“I don’t know,” he breathed, when he was able, “Would you like to try?”

The word ‘okay’ was out of her mouth before Lilah could stop it, her eyes wide, her heart beating hard. Brasa’s smile faded, his eyes focusing on her, the pupils bleeding out into the whites until there was nothing but blackness looking down at her. She drew in a shuddering breath, her fingers curling over his.

Sliding closer to her, Brasa cupped her jaw, tilting it back just a little. He glanced at her face again, checking for her consent. She gave the smallest nod, licking her lips. The motion drew his eyes to her mouth, his body growing hot against her. He leaned down, but instead of hovering over the thin skin of her neck, he moved to the side. The realization that he intended to kiss her came to Lilah in a slow, honeyed wave.

“Yes?” He asked, his breath fanning over her mouth.

“Yes.”

It was so, so slow, this kiss. Light pressure that grew heavier in the smallest increments. Lilah gripped his bicep, trying to ground herself as every nerve in her body screamed to life, reaching out desperately to get more stimulation. He drew back, changed the angle, and kissed her again—deeper, hungrier, tongue running along her bottom lip.

She was too hot, her skin seared by the heat emanating from him. Sweat rose and pooled in the hollows of her arms, beneath her breasts, the crease between her hip and thigh. She heard herself moan, felt her muscles relax as he rolled her beneath him. Brasa pulled away, nosing along her jaw and down to her neck. Lilah surprised herself when her lifted her chin, giving him more access.

The sharp press of his teeth snapped her awake. She sat up, breathing as if she’d been sprinting. Her entire body was shaking, her sheets damp with sweat.

“Well,” she croaked, “That’s new.”

[daretosnoop]

Lessons I learned from the Games

Most of this is just silly, some are actual lessons.

SCK/SCK2:

If you’re going to get murdered, get revenge by leaving clues to the blackmail you have on potential suspects and hope to god someone figures it out

If you’re investigating a crime, being a random transfer student at the end of the year is probably not the way to go, but no one cares because they’re too busy with college applications.

If your niece is coming to your place to investigate a murder and you’re not there, the least you can do is set up a cage to trap any possible break-ins.

Nothing beats being able to hold a gun to the murderer #whySCKremastered???

Teens dealing with pressures to meet college and parental demands

Teens resorting to drugs

Teens dealing with sexism that’s found in abundance in college and work environments

Teachers not giving a shit about what students are going through.

STFD:

If you’re getting death threats, play it cool. Keeps the perps unhinged

Toxicity of fan culture

Throw all CEOs into the closet

Nothing beats Jazz

If you’re going to commit crime in an actor’s community, you must do it with flare

MHM:

If you’re going to buy a Victorian mansion, the least you can do is check for ghosts. And also hire a carpenter beforehand

Never invest your life’s savings into anything

Treat those who help you with basic decency (my god Rose!)

If you’re snooping on someone, don’t give them any indication that you’re onto them

If someone slips a threatening message under your door, open the door.

Victorian houses have all sorts of booby traps, FIND THEM.

TRT:

Don’t trust anyone who’s eager to be your friend

Trust the weirdos and grumpy people

Learn French

Don’t leave incriminating evidence that reveals your lies

There is no such thing as too much food

Women in history have been badly treated by (male) historians.

It’s called the past for a reason

Turn a bad situation into an opportunity to learn

If you’re going to do crime, at least ensure you have an escape route that’s not blocked by the snow

Don’t date people who pressure you to marry them/ask you to prove your love for them

 FIN:

As a woman, if you want anyone to take you seriously and help, you have to be adamant, sassy, and everything men don’t like to see in women.

If you’re a POC, the chances of the police helping you decreases

Capitalism sucks

Police suck

Misogyny in capitalism

Old theaters are amazing

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

Don’t talk to suspects about your case

Have confidence in yourself

 SSH:

Colonialism still exists in the form of capitalism

The art industry is completely profit driven

Mexico and America tensions

The Mayans

They never talked about what happened to the Mayans…..

Don’t deal with shady salesmen

Sometimes saving money contributes to a bad system

If you accepted a position, take your work seriously

Don’t trust the guy trying to be your friend!!!!

Master the art of amnesia should you ever need to use it

Even if you disband a group of art thieves, it’s best to be humble

No one in life is going to help you, even if you get pushed into a monolith

 DOG:

This game is why it’s important to put your dog(s) on a leash! (insert that dog vine: “it don’t bite. Yes it do!”)

If we didn’t have uptight rangers, the parks would be burnt to smithereens

Misogyny exists in the woods

People who are just trying to do their job always get a bad rap even though it’s because of them the park still exists!

Gangsters are bad, but also low-key cool

Get back at your enemies by making a fake grave of them

Old people have interesting stories

Gold can release arsenic into water

Always check well water before using

Wood mice are bad for health

If you’re going to get tied up and tossed into your tool shed, keep a scythe on hand

Go birdwatching at night

Torque is a fancy word for screw driver

If you’re a POC, people are most likely to suspect you.

CAR:

There is no job security if you end up in hospital

Sometimes you really need a 2000 calorie sundae

If you went to jail, people are most likely to suspect you first

Don’t spy on your co-workers

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!

Don’t procrastinate on a job

If you’re miserable in life, maybe it’s time to sign up for some therapy

If you have a sad backstory, you’re automatically entitled to everyone’s sad backstory

Mental illness: depression

Health awareness: niacin, don’t eat junk food like a 2000 calorie sundae

Don’t dump someone just because they’re not able to give you a lavish lifestyle

DDI:

If you’re going to trash someone’s boat, don’t leave your business card behind

If you’re tired of small mindedness, it’s best to just leave

It’s always handy in life to know boating skills

If you’re trying to report suspicious activity, communicating by bottles is not the way to go

Don’t feed wild animals!

Capitalism sucks

Look carefully at your environment, you never know what clues are left behind

Always make a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work

Don’t be afraid to explore

SHA:

Never trust the guy who’s trying to be your friend!!!

Always trust the grumpy guy

Horses die easily

There is no such thing as over ripe vegetables

Sunflowers should be planted near gardens so that bees come

Respect chickens

Falling in love with a criminal is difficult when your dad’s a cop

It’s handy to know how to ride a horse

Ghost towns are terrifying

Farmers work hard and should be respected

CUR:

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!!!!!

Don’t be a negligent parent

Before getting married, make sure your partner has a good relationship with your child

Don’t trust creepy people

America and British will always oppose each other

Talking parrots are always handy

British aristocracy was supported through colonialism #got Loulou on his Travels, uh huh

If you’re a spinster, you’re going to be the mom of something

If you’re afraid of becoming a monster, best be dramatic about it

It’s really important to have good communication between partners

Don’t stick your new wife in a room that still has pictures of your old wife and where all the furniture has covers on them

If you have a manor, you better explore it before some 12-year-old gets hurt exploring it

don’t go to great lengths to protect a rock

calling something that skips every generation a “family tradition” is just rude and exclusive

don’t leave your child alone for so long. Don’t keep them away from people their age

don’t write memories, no one wants to hear your life story

CLK:

if you’re going to presume someone’s identity, you better nail the part down hard

don’t blow up the kitchen when there’s only three people in the house and you were the closest and last one in the kitchen

emotional manipulation

gas lighting

if someone mentions stolen jewellery, putting back what you stole just incriminates you

even if you have psychic abilities, don’t be an ass bout it

no one ever tips because no one like the system. Pay your employees what they deserve!

Even though the depression’s going on, people are still dumping money in psychic lessons and dress making

No one ever gives anything away for free

Even if you’re promised money, don’t put too much trust in the promises of others

Don’t be rude to the person who’s trying to help you

If your partner is demanding to be spoiled during an economic depression, find a better partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you left your will.

 TRN:

The dumb blonde joke is not funny

Cops are useless and unhelpful

People are more willing to listen to adults then teens/young adults

Celebrities are much different in real life then in their celebrity world.

Don’t steal someone else’s ideaà artist theft

Old trains are super cool

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you hid your treasure

Don’t dump someone just because people think they’re dumb

 DAN:

Capitalism sucks

The fashion industry is brutal

normal size representation

Boss’s can be crappy people

Don’t blackmail people

If you promised to do work, you better dedicate yourself to it

Having a healthy fear of giving away personal information is not a bad thing

Don’t aid stalkers

Covid-precaution: cover face with mask. Act erratic to keep people away from you

Concept of older men dating younger women is actually frowned upon

Love is mysterious

Flashlight on the many women who helped decode during WW2 but largely remain unrecognized by countries today

Forgery is okay sometimes

 CRE:

Indigenous cultures continue to be badly and negatively portrayed in media

Capitalism sucks

Environmentalism

Academia is not as research oriented as one wishes it was

Daddy-issues

Native Hawaiians forced to “work with” big corps in order to survive.

Tourism industry and its affects on the environment and native population

Sometimes an upgrade is not a good thing

ICE:

Animal conservatism

Capitalism sucks

International competitions suck

Running away from humans to hide in a cabin and bonding with a wolf is not a bad thing

Never enter a sauna alone

It’s bad business to kick customers out

If your customers are falling asleep everyday in a common room, it’s probably not a good sign of booming business

Don’t be chill over bombs exploding near your hotel

Always handy to know how to drive a snow mobile

Don’t volunteer to be a maid, ever

Cops are useless

CRY:

Don’t dump your job on your girlfriend

There’s nothing wrong with being emo

Men being emotional and desiring love and affection

Men being abused in relationships

Even if your relative leaves you a ton of money, it’s no excuse for not being a good guardian/parent

Don’t trust strangers. Don’t eat food from random people

Customer service is awful. Even when the customer is trying to instigate a horrible reaction in you, you got to put on a smile

Always trust the eccentric lady

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

A date in the cemetery is not a bad idea

If your partner demands you to spoil them, get a new partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them where you hid your treasure

VEN:

Anyone can help out on an international mafia case

The mafia is very creative and artistic

Capitalism sucks

Assert your independence as a young woman by dancing in a cat suit on stage? I guess?

Money can be found anywhere

Eat the rich

Don’t trust the person trying to be friends with you

Possessive relationships are red flags

Don’t steal a cheap neckless if you’re a notorious thief

Cops kind of useful for once.

HAU

Don’t pull a prank on your partner before your wedding

Don’t invite someone who used to date your partner and still has feelings for them

If your partner is missing, actually look for them instead of sitting around

Crows are amazing

Fiona might have lost her parents at a young age and her life as a hermit definitely had its side affects, but she also saved herself from the misogyny women endured

RAN:

If your friend gets kidnapped, please, at least fake some concern

Don’t waste time with monkeys

The only other person on the island is probably the culprit

WAV:

Girl bullying can be worse than boy bullying

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

  TOT:

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

Academic institutions are struggling to fund research

Capitalism sucks

Even if you hate your lead, don’t sabotage the team

Communication is important

Even if you hate your job, don’t sabotage your team

 SAW:

People who resist to change just become boulders in the way of progress

Boomer mentality is soul destroying

Emotional manipulation

Gas lighting

Depression

Sometimes you have to cut away from those you love in order to maintain your sanity

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory.

If you have to give your partner a gift every time you fight, you might have relationship problems

Don’t be in a relationship just because you’re used to it

Don’t force someone to adhere to your expectations in life

If you’re unable to talk to your partner and so resort to haunting her inn, you probably have relationship issues

[himalayaz]

The Comprehensive Radical Guide to Shoplifting

[working title]

“That white man, baby, and may his balls shrivel and his ass hole rot, he want you to be worried about money. That’s his whole game. But if we got to where we are without money, we can get further. I ain’t worried about they money --they aint got no right to it anyhow, they stole it from us-- they aint never met nobody they didn’t lie to and steal from. Well, I can steal, too. And rob. How you think I raised my daughters? Shit.” -James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks”

-Karl Marx

I love shoplifting. In fact, I would not be able to maintain many aspects of my life/style without stealing from places like Kroger, Target, Lowe’s. Shoplifting makes me feel powerful, agentic, and it helps me heal from the omnipresence of ownership. To be an entity under capitalism, is to be owned, we are each owned. When I steal a beautiful plant from Home Depot, I whisper to myself and my ancestors slyly as I walk past the check out, this is the earth, my mother and my lover, and I would be a fool to buy the earth from anyone, she does not belong to anyone, I do not belong to anyone. 

Capitalism is a religion of theft. Attempts at cataloging the breadth of what has been stolen from us populate a social-scientific discipline in their own right. The capitalist class, their progenitors, and likely their descendants have robbed us of things for which there is no process on earth that will allow for complete remuneration, there remains only a gnawing hole where our human potential should lay. As our planet screams out at us in warning of what shall come to pass if we do not win, I am chilled realizing that capitalism has outdone itself again and is attempting to steal the very future of the human race from us. 

My role on earth is to struggle towards liberation, and I will do that until I die. Our ancestors are magicians, creating and evolving so many strategies of resistance such that today, young radicals treat our work in Movement as if it were a classical art style, forever to be stylized and improved upon. Our struggle is shapeless, taking on the form of whatever is most needed and convenient to the people fighting back. There is a place for everyone in this ever evolving  movement and a strategy for each of us to practice with; there are strategies that are yet to be dreamt of, even. In my eternal pettiness and spite, gifted to me by my ancestors, my tool of choice is theft. 

Shoplifting captures all of the elements of my personal politic, especially, and with emphasis on, pleasure, developing a sense of luxury that is anti consumption and anti capitalist, and my theory of brilliance: Not only is there a better life out there for us, a better life than what has been dealt to us, but that we are deserving and worthy and willing to simply walk up to the beauty section of Target, or march to the rotunda freedom flags burning, and take it. 

At first, when I started shoplifting, it was to feed myself. Hunger, which drives so many of us to struggle and resistance, is an important part of many lifters’ stories. My first summer in Atlanta at 19 years old, I saw an opportunity in the fact that our local Kroger served Black people so naturally they were understaffed, poorly organized, and open 24 hours. At 3 am you could walk out of that grocery store with entire carts of food, toiletries, and other supplies at will. Of course, I hadn’t the courage or skill to do such a thing back then, so I started small. I’d slip small fruits in my pockets while switching aisles, and scan things the wrong way. My political development and study grew at the same rate as my gumption in that grocery store; even as I was bringing in more income, something about stealing from companies that aren’t paying their workers internationally or in my neighborhood felt like a giant fuck you to the CEOs. Regardless of the thrill of my personal disrespect, my growing skill was rooted in nothing. No politic, principle, or larger meaning. I simply shoplifted to feed myself and my roommates or to get trinkets that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. 

I cannot pinpoint what pushed my thinking around shoplifting towards understanding it as a possible liberatory tool. With some certainty, I can admit that some of it was inspired by watching the cycle of police terrorism, rioting and looting that happens in America just about every summer. When the Baltimore uprising happened (I had just turned 18 a few months prior), it was the first time I’d ever been to a Black led protest or seen in person the level the state would go to to repress Black liberation efforts. It was also the first time I’d ever witness someone looting. While the dogs, the helicopters, the blockades terrified me, there was something so right about watching a young man grab a rock and shatter the entire glass front window of a CVS. That rightness spread from my stomach through my nervous system as exhilaration when I watched a group of people peel off from the protest route to flood that CVS -- despite the people at the mics beckoning for them to stop. America steals family members, community leaders, neighbors from us. Why should we not destroy and steal from the embodiments of that theft most accessible to us? 

My commitment to movement work is rooted in collective empowerment, which happens through mutual aid. Shoplifting sits at the axis of strategy, privilege, marxist thought, finesse, and usefulness. It is both a method of survival for many of us, and a tool we can use to radicalize our peers. It is dangerous. It is a statement to the gluttonous pigs who seek to keep us low, that we will steal as much laughter, as much joy, as many moments back from you as we do mascara, cheezits, and nice candles. Shoplifting recognizes that none of the beauty or conveniences on Earth belong to just one person or corporation, they belong to the workers, they belong to the afro indigenous descendants, they belong to the artisans, they belong to each of us. We’ll steal to feed each other, then we’ll steal to arm each other, and one day, we will reclaim this planet and our future, right as we are stealing heads.

[catsnuggler]

Despite not actively practicing my religion, I hope my funeral will be a pagan one. Nothing over-the-top, just burn me on a pyre in fine clothes (just my suit honestly, I don’t need to dress like a medieval Saxon or Nord) with my seax in hand, Mjolnir necklace on, and have a pagan priest (they don’t even have to be Norse pagan, so long as they know the basics of how to conduct a funeral for one and the gods they do worship are fine with it) pray that I be accepted warmly in the afterlife (most likely Helheim. I doubt my premature oath to Odin that I haven’t really followed would mean I’d go to Valhalla, especially as I’m not a warrior and don’t ever want to be one any more than I might have to be for a temporary period. Also... I’m going to ask him to release me from the oath. I can’t uphold it, not now. I don’t even remember it). I don’t imagine I’d have too many people attending, save for those who can accept a pagan funeral, and I don’t know many people in-person in the first place. I don’t know where I’d have it. Somewhere nearby would be most affordable, and as much as I’ve resented the area and felt trapped, it’s where I grew up. However, it’s a desert, prone to wildfires. Maybe the West side would be more fitting. It’s where I was born, is not a desert, and it is land that is precious to me. I resent that, no matter what, I’d be yet another colonist burying myself in stolen land, but that resent doesn’t change the fact that I’m diasporic and have never been to Europe. I’m European only insofar as I am not Indigenous to this land (and I’m not at all Indigenous here, I’ve only lived here while my existence as colonist has robbed those who are of their rights). Oh, one more thing. I’d need to write several apologies to people I knew and cared about but hurt. Yeah, that sounds like the funeral for me. Oh. No coffins. Obviously, my ashes and bones would need to be buried. Just bury the remains in an open grave. So long as all the meat on me is turned to ash, it should probably be fine.

[blackfreethinkers]

Last week, a white professor at George Washington University outed herself in a years-long charade in which she told people she was Black and built an academic career around this lie. Jessica Krug, who is from a white Jewish family in the Kansas City suburbs, affected an accent and an evolving set of backstories, eventually landing on a version in which she self-presented as an Afro-Latina from the Bronx.

Krug’s colleagues at George Washington privately questioned her claims and recently began to raise the alarm with administrators, which is likely why she came clean. Or as writer and RaceBaitr editor in chief Hari Ziyad put it, “She didn’t do it out of benevolence. She did it because she had been found out.”

In this absurd public disgrace, Krug joins other white people who have made false claims to nonwhite identities in some combination of career predation, white entitlement, and a perhaps unknowable X factor of what-the-fuck: Rachel Dolezal, who maybe needs no introduction at this point, but also lesser-knowns like the former Vanderbilt neurology professor who created an online persona of a Hopi professor and then killed it off during the pandemic. But these are obvious fringe cases—entertaining upon implosion for the general public and quietly devastating to the web of people they drew into the lie and harmed in the process. The more common version of white theft in academia is way less tabloid sensational.

The entire American university system was built on white theft made mundane through the passage of time. The casual mention of schools acting as assimilation academies on a campus tour. The somber press release, all too often made by white administrators, contextualizing past university leaders and the names on campus buildings as slave owners and segregationists. A ceremonial shield gathering dust in a lab thousands of miles away from its creator’s ancestors. It’s a history that bleeds into the present, the echoes of which can be heard every time the academy shows its true colors.

The modern American university system is a tool, not a product, of colonization. The University of North Carolina, the oldest public college in the nation, was, much like many universities in the South, built with the labor of enslaved Black people. So, too, were prestigious Ivy League institutions, like Brown, while presidents at Princeton and Columbia and countless others owned slaves through the Civil War. As Massachusetts Institution of Technology history professor Craig Steven Wilder wrote in his 2013 book on the subject, “The academy never stood apart from American slavery. In fact, it stood beside church and state as the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage.”

To stave off those who felt self-conscious about their complicity in such a violent system, white academics molded their fields of study to fortify their claims of superiority. Entire fields of racist pseudoscience were designed in the nineteenth century to back up the claim that Black minds were inferior and to deny Black people true personhood, to act as a rebuke to the growing abolitionist movement.

The academy did not stop at dismissing living Black bodies and minds, though. It also sought to retrieve every physical ounce of these varied and unique cultures and communities, for the sake of proprietary knowledge and profit. This is how both modern museums and land-grant universities came to be. Signed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the Morrill Act, not so dissimilar from Harvard’s Indian College, was a money-making affair, with the stated desire of “turning land taken from tribal nations into seed money for higher education,” as High Country News wrote earlier this year. When the dust settled, 11 million acres had been, often violently and illegally, wrested from Indigenous nations and placed under the management of university endowment funds. To date, the land transfer has netted these endowments at least a half-billion dollars.

As the land was distributed, the universities sought to take also what accompanied these spaces, namely the remains and cultural items that the displaced Indigenous peoples had stewarded and protected until this stage of colonization. Under the guise of fields such as archaeology or anthropology, white professors at these schools scoured Indian Country, digging up remains that had been respectfully buried for thousands of years. As explained in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory in an article on the shifting ethics of reburial and repatriation, by the middle of the nineteenth century, “the majority of Euro-Americans thought Native Americans incapable of becoming civilized.”

And in helping convince the public of this, white academics granted themselves permission to disturb these sites in the name of preserving what would, they told themselves, surely be otherwise lost. By the time the institutionalized grave-robbing was complete—federal law giving tribal nations legal power to block such disturbances was not passed until 1990, and even now there are loopholes that need closing—colleges like the University of Michigan and Florida Atlantic University had stolen and stored away thousands of Native remains and countless more artifacts, many of which ended up behind glass display cases at museums.

Much like Krug, these institutions did not proactively change their ways or admit their wrongdoings. Their student bodies were forcibly integrated. Beginning the process of overturning centuries of white-favored racist hiring practices required lawsuits, not a sudden change of heart. Only recently—as in the past three decades—have universities taken a critical look in the mirror. And even then, more often than not, it is the people still impacted by these historical actions, like the descendants of the 272 enslaved people sold at auction at Georgetown University in 1838, who are taking the first step and forcing the universities into action.

When left to their own devices, university trustee boards have proven themselves more than happy to leave the past in the past. Where policies to facilitate the return of Native land should be instead sit useless and performative land acknowledgments. Where restitution for the descendants of those who built the universities should be are instead pedestals for Confederate monuments that the student body—not the university—tore down.

While distinct, the American university system’s legacies of enslavement and violent colonization reveal a common thread: a history of violent white theft. Universities have long acted as sanctuaries for white academics who want to take on the voyeuristic endeavor of professing to be an expert on a group of people to which they do not belong. It turns the window shopper into the salesperson; the gate-builder into the gatekeeper. Trying to grasp why Krug, Dolezal, and McLaughlin did what they did is almost beside the point. Instead, it is time to start asking why people of this ilk all seek validation and cover through the academy—and why the academy always provides it.

[violetsystems]

Year after year, the luminaries of international development, from Bill Gates to Jim Kim, Nick Kristof to Steven Pinker, line up to tell us about the wonderful progress that has been made against global poverty. According to the most recent estimates, published by the World Bank, there were "only" 734 million people living on less than $1.90 per day in 2015, down from 1.9 billion people in 1990.

It sounds like wonderful news. But there is a problem with this narrative. Oddly enough, there is no empirical basis for the $1.90 line. It is an arbitrary threshold that has no grounding in actual human needs. Empirical evidence shows that $1.90 per day is not even enough for people to secure decent nutrition, to say nothing of other basic requirements. In fact, at least 3.5 billion people live on more than this, and yet remain trapped in poverty.

It is important to recognise that the international poverty line is adjusted for purchasing power. When we hear $1.90 per day, we commonly assume that this means the equivalent of what an American might be able to buy with that amount of money in, say, Sudan or India. But exactly the opposite is true. It is the equivalent of what $1.90 can buy in the United States. Just think for a moment about what this means. It is virtually nothing.

To get a sense for how low this standard is, the economist David Woodward once calculated that to live on the international poverty line in Britain, in an earlier base year, would be like 35 people trying to survive "on a single minimum wage, with no benefits of any kind, no gifts, borrowing, scavenging, begging or savings to draw on (since these are all included as "income" in poverty calculations)." This goes beyond any definition of "extreme".  

This brings us to an important question. Why is it that the barons of international development judge the lives of people in the global South by $1.90 per day, when everyone agrees - including the World Bank itself - that this standard is far too low for a human being in the global North? For comparison, the poverty line in the US is $15 per day.

There is a clear double standard here, and it does not take much to recognise that it is racist. There is one standard for the (majority white) people of the North, and another standard for the (majority Black and brown) people of the South. It is a colonial logic that remains with us today, and goes unchallenged year after year.

Some try to justify this disparity by saying these are totally separate economies, and so they require separate standards. But this premise - the idea of separation - is simply not true. The economies of the North and South have been integrated into a single global system for at least 500 years, ever since the onset of colonialism.

We know that the rise of the North depended on cheap labour and raw materials extracted from the South during the colonial period. It depended on silver stolen from the Andes, rubber from the Congo, grain extracted from India, as well as sugar and cotton grown by enslaved Africans on land stolen from Indigenous Peoples.  

This might seem like ancient history, but the very same arrangement remains in place today. People in the global South sew the clothes that Steven Pinker wears each day. They assemble Bill Gates' laptops, including the one that Nick Kristof uses to write his columns. They grow and pick the bananas and berries that Jim Kim has for breakfast. And then there is our coffee and tea, the coltan in our gadgets, the oil that fuels our industries, the lithium we need for electric cars … everywhere we look, it is overwhelmingly clear that we live in a single global economy.

In fact, trade data shows that high-income nations are totally reliant on resources and labour from the South. In 2015, high-income nations appropriated a net total of 10.1 billion tonnes of materials, and 379 billion hours of human labour from the rest of the world. There is an enormous net flow of resources and embodied labour from poor countries to rich countries.

One cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a single global economy when it suits you to use the labour and resources of the poor, but then insist on separation in order to measure their lives by different standards. That is the logic of apartheid.

Global capitalism depends on resources and labour extracted from the South, and yet the people who render it - including those who work in the factories, mines and plantations of multinational companies - receive but pennies in return. Pinker and Gates tell us to celebrate when workers in the South go from one to two dollars a day. But would we celebrate if we learned that workers in the North were earning two dollars a day, while employed by the biggest brands in the world? No. We would be outraged. Because for workers in the North we apply the standards of morality and justice, yet for workers in the South we apply the standards of bare existence.

The analogy to apartheid is appropriate. South African law required one wage for white people and a much lower wage for Black people. Those who benefitted from this system insisted that it was natural: just how the market works. Economists devised elaborate arguments to explain why Black people's labour was worth less - ignoring, of course, that the economy depended on it.

Similar arguments persist today. Economists say that workers in the South have lower wages because of lower productivity. But it is not true. Keep in mind that in many cases they are working for the same companies with the same technology (say, a GM factory in Mexico, or a Nike sweatshop in Bangladesh). In fact, Southern workers are often more productive than their Northern counterparts, as they work under much more extractive conditions. And yet they are paid as little as 1/30th the amount - for the same work, in the same industries.  

For 500 years, capital has relied on the devaluation of lives in the global South, whether it be through colonisation, dispossession, genocide and slavery, or, more recently, through structural adjustment programmes, free trade agreements and corporate land grabs that depress the costs of Southern labour and resources. The $1.90 line is the legacy of this long history. It is part of a colonial ideology that sees people of colour as cheap.

In the 21st century, in the era of Black Lives Matter, we can no longer accept the racist double standards of international development. We must reject the logic of apartheid. If we are going to live in a single global economy, then we must demand a single standard for all human lives: that all people receive fair wages for their labour and fair prices for their resources. This is the principle that international development must demand, if it is to have any moral standing. This is what real progress looks like.