#y'all wanna talk about colonization

[persephone-is-here-omg]

One of my coworkers had to, basically, go into hiding because they were at a voting center working as an electoral witness (selected by the CNE)

Another one had to wait in line for over 7 hours to be able to vote, even when voting centers in Venezuela are supposed to open at 6am, his voting center ended up opening after 1pm. Voting centers are prepared in advance, so that on election day, people can start voting as soon as possible.

My aunt lives a popular area of Caracas, Colectivos, PNB, GNB and DGCIM were terrorizing people in those areas to keep them from going out to protest (which is a right in the Venezuela's Constitution)

No one is saying that the USA isn't an interventionist state, but acting like that makes the Venezuelan government a victim is just asinine.

People are being killed for voting and trying to defend their vote. Children have been kidnapped and taken to "detention" centers. Maduro has gone on national tv and ordered around the clock work on two max security prisons and re-education centers for those detained.

What do Maduro and the Government have to do for Venezuelans to be taken seriously? How many children have to be kidnapped? How many women have to raped? How many men have to be killed?

Senator Chris Murphy: "We tried to construct a coup in Venezuela in April 2019 and it blew up in our face".

I want you guys to watch this short video with sound.

[ktempestbradford]

Yet Another Thing Black women and BIPOC women in general have been warning you about since forever that you (general You; societal You; mostly WytFolk You) have ignored or dismissed, only for it to come back and bite you in the butt.

I'd hoped people would have learned their lesson with Trump and the Alt-Right (remember, Black women in particular warned y'all that attacks on us by brigading trolls was the test run for something bigger), but I guess not.

Any time you wanna get upset about how AI is ruining things for artists or writers or workers at this job or that, remember that BIPOC Women Warned You and then go listen extra hard to the BIPOC women in your orbit and tell other people to listen to BIPOC women and also give BIPOC women money.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it.

Give them money via PayPal or Ko-fi or Venmo or Patreon or whatever. Hire them. Suggest them for that creative project/gig you can't take on--or you could take it on but how about you toss the ball to someone who isn't always asked?

Oh, and stop asking BIPOC women to save us all. Because, as you see, we tried that already. We gave you the roadmap on how to do it yourselves. Now? We're tired.

Of the trolls, the alt-right, the colonizers, the tech bros, the billionaires, the other scum... and also you. You who claim to be progressive, claim to be an ally, spend your time talking about what sucks without doing one dang thing to boost the signal, make a change in your community (online or offline), or take even the shortest turn standing on the front lines and challenging all that human garbage that keeps collecting in the corners of every space with more than 10 inhabitants.

We Told You. Octavia Butler Told You. Audre Lorde Told You. Sydette Harry Told You. Mikki Kendall Told You. Timnit Gebru Told You.

When are you gonna listen?

[gamerwoman3d]

Hey. Y'all wanna hear some crazy talk?

This will probably be the deadliest tornado season on record for the Bible Belt.

Texas is on fire with over a million acres burned. El Niño is on a weird downturn dropping blizzards across California and Colorado. Hot air plus cold air equals big boom. And that's just the science part of it.

CONTENT WARNING: mentions of Death, murder, natural disasters, related to hate crime, references to spiritual practices

The spiritual part of it? Asshole colonizers killed an all-black wearing two-spirit Choctaw kid in Owasso named Nex Benedict.

I'm not going to be surprised if tornadoes rip apart the bigoted governor's house. I'm not going to be surprised if Owasso is ripped off the map. I'm not going to be surprised if that one Senator has to deal with funeral after funeral and a state of emergency for the rest of his term. I'm not going to be shocked if the resultant economic downturn collapses the political power of the red states, and I'm not gonna be surprised if we get a second dust bowl outta this.

To top it off, there's a new twisters film in post production. The first twisters film came out during a weird spike in tornadoes as well. It's like the collective unconsciousness of the artistic/filmmaking world knows what's about to happen.

Now. I do not speak for all natives. As for myself, and some other natives - a tornado is not just hot air plus blizzard air. It's a person. It is an entity. We can talk to that entity, and it talks back. And my understanding was a lot of those entities wore black. A lot of those entities came with more than one spirit. It's possible to have a "family of tornadoes."

One little problem- someone just prematurely sent an all-black wearing Choctaw two-spirit back to the sky.

I don't even know them. I don't have any reason to believe that the spirit of that innocent kid might be vengeful about what happened. But I got a pretty good handle on what the ANCESTORS probably feel about that.

A kid like Nex is a gift. They can understand both sides of the gender divide, can solve problems and make medicine that no other type of person can. Owasso was blessed to have them around - if you believed in a great spirit then you'd know that the great spirit PERSONALLY sent that gift to your community. Rejecting Nex was an act of rejecting the great spirit.

Someone sent that gift back to the sky.

Don't be shocked if the sky is angry.

During certain crises, many natives believed that some ancestors went into the forests to turn into animals in order to feed the starving people when there's famine. Other spirits may go into the forest to become fire, and into the sky to become storms, when there's war. Currently, one million acres of spirit life just left for the sky - ancestral spirits no longer there to feed the people who are hungry, but who went to join the great spirit and the spirit warriors dressed in black on a warpath in the sky.

Over a million acres of Texas just burned. Smoke is how the ancestors carried prayers up to the sky where the great spirit resides. The sky is absolutely chock full of their angered prayer smoke, smokey spirits wearing black.

The sky kept telling me: This is a war. They killed the wrong kid. The ancestors will not listen to anyone who buries the hatchet this year - no true native would try to stop it from happening, because they would know the importance of the gift of a two-spirit in black clothes. They would know the importance of the gift of the animals in the forest that are their own kin relatives. They would know something is wrong, for all that to be in the sky at once, and they will know to take cover from it.

If you aren't familiar with a hatchet burying ritual, don't worry about it. It won't help you right now anyway. The sky has spoken, and believes that no one who is a true native would bury the hatchet in this instance. Man wearing black is out for blood. Move. Get out of its way. Get underground. The houses aren't safe.

It's going to be bad.

A note to natives wondering who tf I am - I don't claim to be part of a tribe but I have o-gah-pah and other tribal ancestry. Some of my non-native ancestors assisted john ross and john watts in hiding native children from the feds in white neighborhoods when shit got bad. You don't have to listen to me - listen to your own elders. Listen to your own wildlife. There are no birds in the photos of Texas wildfires for a reason. If you see them all flying the same direction, try to keep up.

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Ep8 Musings - Pyromaniac Du Lac 🔥 (Spoilers)

NGL, as much as I love this finale, I'm disappointed. I wanted to see way more violence.

That's the thing about necromancy--be careful who/what you wake up!

"FATHER! THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!"

There he goes.

Was that NECESSARY, smashing that old man into the window like that!?

You better ACT, JACOB, with your Arya Stark hit list!

I'm so sorry I laughed at his mental illness, but MEOW!? Omg he's cracked. XD

So they gave him a baby scythe/machete--I wanted Sam's scythe. :( But it's cool how Louis broke his sickle screaming at Armand, and HAD to switch to the machete.

Not Louis talking to his victims, who help him plot the murders, LOL. He can't concentrate with all that French jibber-jabber! He's got a mass murder to plot! Yeah, he'll bring your truck back in mint condition! LOLOLOL.

Yeah, STFU corpse!

IKR, STFU Armand! Ain't nobody thinking about YOU! (But actually, Louis WAS thinking about him, and warned him to stay away, sooo.... :\)

The whole Sam reveal later was SO good, I love this show!

(Not Louis shading Hans' ugly costume. XD) And Tuan WANTS to die? Whaaaat?

LFG

This jazzy film noir crime boss heist music is an interesting choice.

HIS EYES DILATING.

Louis went full-blown Carrie. 😈

I CANNOT BELIEVE Y'ALL OFF-SCREENED THE SLAUGHTER, AMC. 😩

You showed Lestat dragging Louis by his effing JAWBONE, and punching a HOLE thru a PRIEST, but can't show us Louis cutting a red streak thru that stupid theatre!? Wtf!?

My Humanities arse sucks at math, but my bff's in STEM and immediately caught that the math wasn't mathin here.

Yeah, eff that flute guy!

(Estelle had me dying.) Interesting tea though--I wonder who's in the London coven?....

Louis' EYES this episode were the best yet. 👌

(RIP Estelle; I liked you the most.) I just wanna know if Louis ignited that rag from all the way at the Theatre, or if something in the exhaust or whatever triggered the fire on its own. (And now we know what that weird reaction from Santiago was about.)

Not Louis calling Santiago by his government name, LOL. 😭

AND Lou called you a colonizer too, you "'bleached-blonde, bad-built, butch body" British hack! XD

Using Francis at the end of every bar(b) was right out the "Crodie" Kendrick vs Drake playbook, I LOVE IT--THIS IS SURLOIN BEEF.

DANG, emasculation and evisceration in equal measure! No one cares about the eraser when the pencil's shaved down to a nub!

And not Louis using "Come to Me" as a death threat!

That MIMIC Gift must've STUNG, Francis! 😜

His death was WAY TOO FAST. These are the kinds of mofos you need to SAVOR.

That shot of the machete was sooo vintage Hollywood noir, it's really clever, especially to be used for Gothic Horror.

Rot In Pieces, FRANCIS! 💩🔪

[house-of-mirrors]

How was this greenlit

Wtf was this story

What is this shit

This has me at a loss for eloquence I'm just good lord what is happening in there. This is too much for R. You don't get well crafted rant. You get primal rage

Nah we're just going turbo "Maya civilization was power hungry and did human sacrifice and Mesoamerican society is scary and cursed and evil." You can't imagine any story with indigenous people that isn't them being superstitious villains and hurting white people? Didn't y'all take a class on avoiding colonialist narratives?

Granted I don't know much about Maya society but taking sacred symbols like the calendar (what is this, 2012?) and jaguar and twisting them to be a source of evil and taboo and horror is realllllly bad and also doing any research at all reveals the "bloodthirsty sacrifice" narrative was constructed by colonizers

IT'S NOT HARD to not be racist it's almost comical at this point how they just keep digging the whole deeper with the third city. Stop. Just stop.

I'm at the final choice but I don't wanna! I wanna go home! I don't wanna kill myself but I also really don't wanna eat someone so!!!!! What do?!

This story absolutely is not canon for my oc story

In conclusion:

HOW WAS THIS ALLOWED WHY DID NO ONE STOP THIS AAAAGH

(Also saw someone on the Reddit talking about how much they love the third city being used as a symbol of "primal evil" and I will not argue on Reddit I will not argue on Reddit I will not- but hey, go screw yourself.)

[ditizygirl]

Why is everyone so okay with being called colonizers 😟, like the reaching of tq's = ddlg and morality OCD were their only issues. For the most part everyone agrees that racism is a major issue in this community, so what are we going to do to fix. Don't tell me y'all wanna sweep y'all racism under the rug 😞.

I'm actually surprised no one is talking about it. Like I called you guys colonizers, and you're focusing on a misinterpretation of something else I said??? I guess if the shoe fits they're wearing it.

[nururu]

I hate y'all bc you're more mad about some guy making a joke about the Barbie movie bc "it's anti feminist against one of the "best" feminist movies made" rather than being mad about the indigenous genocide joke they made in the Barbie movie, which targets THE MOST VULNERABLE WOMEN IN NORTH AMERICA. WHERE THERE WAS RECENTLY A STATE OF EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT MADE DUE TO THE EPIDEMIC OF MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS WOMEN. A GENOCIDE THAT IS STILL SO RELEVANT. who gives a shit about your shitty anti feminist colonizer white supremacy propaganda movie. Y'all are always upset over the wrong fucking thing.

Like you guys do realize indigenous north American women have the smallest population and face the highest and most violent forms of discrimination in North America, right? But you wanna hail the Barbie movie as a feminist Bible all while they're like "omg what's happening here is EXACTLY like when colonizers came over and eradicated an entire population of indigenous people hehehahahoho giggle giggle" "fuck those indigenous women who are being kidnapped and murdered at an alarming rate. They aren't real women bc they're not colonizers like us" y'all can genuinely go fuck yourselves. What a bullshit movie. Y'all love genocide and colonization. That's why seeing y'all perform over Palestine makes me sick. You're only upset bc it doesn't effect you. If you actually cared, youd care about the genocide happening in America too. But that benefits you, so you won't even acknowledge it or talk about it bc it threatens your comfort as a settler. Y'all are the pot calling the kettle black and I'm so sick of it.

[shivasdarknight]

y'all just really have no respect for people, do you. like jesus christ, you want your jerk off material so badly that you will just spit all over a creator who express discomfort with work being used a certain way.

like shit, id call what y'all do to authors of color as just straight up racial harassment with how their works get twisted or how the characters are treated fandom wise. you wanna talk about the importance of seeing yourself in fic but this is how people justify the erasure of identities in fanfic, esp vulnerable sexualities or genders. this is exactly how people justify race fetishization.

just forever baffled by how the desire for smut always wins out over basic fucking decency when it concerns sensitive subjects in fic. im not defending shit like what rice did with her work, i just think it's rich y'all use the cry of censorship the way republicans do when someone says something to the effect of oh idk. stop making slave kink fics with properties by black authors or something. or the shit that was seen with the colonizer lan wangji bullshit. but considering people can't even respect the subjects of rpf - like destroying dan and phil's actual relationship, or ignoring people like markiplier who isnt even saying stop just stop sending him pornographic content involving him and his friends/peers - im not surprised people are bitching about the idea of showing someone respect esp when it concerns a vulnerable or marginalized identity who's doing the writing and asking that people not be fucking nasty with it

[baconlettucetomatoeggs]

lest reality may gaslight me...........

i admit there's this growing jealousy of mine when she talks about her escapades in coding. it kinda reminded me how little i know, when in fact i should know this.

now the semester's coming (yep i got enrolled, thank god) i did what most people do when they're dunno what the heck things would do: ask their nearest person

"so, honest question, do you think we're work-ready?" "i dont think so. why's that?" "if beginners nowadays can code RISC-V like it was nothing, what's left to us? sure we can say we studied this course for like 4 years but... isnt that a waste?" "i mean... yeah? i mean even the webdevs of our course were really cocky. no one even taught us AI. heck, our classmates are working on BPO. nothing wrong about it but it's such a waste of skill" (some context on the text above: the mate's specializing in AI. also some of us know webdev. at least we can deploy XAMPP and call it a day. others feel fancy with their javascripts. the second person also has a knack of wanting to make a RISC on their own. welp) and i'm still here being jealous with even seeing double colons on code, or even a simple coding example. i just cant do this anymore. it's filled with spite and i dunno where to channel that frustration: i need to learn this. but i cant. and i'm demotivated.

then she started planning on making a compiler.

we never had that kind of stuff in my course. so in confusion, i asked my mates who were studying outside of my cooleg

"hey y'all made compilers in your course?" "yeah." and idk what to say. i just wasted 4 years of my life. just. gone

"why didnt you take a course that has a license? i mean, with that entrance exam score you're set to every course" because i liked it here. but now it's just a lie.

and i wasted 4 years of my life here.

i remembered the Cult Leader (my prof, not really a cult leader but their messianic complex is HARD) said to us: "what's the use of learning low level? everything's done in web these days" as my mates and i were doing system calls on our devices.

and the worst of it all was the fact that my bff told me a real cold hard truth accidentally:

"hey did you know? your course is just a minor on this other engineering course"

lol i have no pride left in my what is essentially me, my hobby, my joy, my life. not only im dumb, but i know nothing

so, there are two options left for me:

just cry about it.

accept that everything is mediocre and you need to walk on your own, spite and all

while eating my lunch today, i told to myself i need a focused learning of all the things i wanna learn to. no i wont speak it beacause im afraid it wouldnt come to fruition

i wanna apologise to her tbh. not only she didnt know, i just dunno what she talks about 80% of the time. i like it when she's around, and i like it when she's eager on something. sorry ><

kinda disappointing that i'll go back on 4th year instead of 1st year. i definitely need that introductory class.

all i got in the end was... please dont tell your hobbies, because if you do you'll feel insecure about it when you find you dont hobbied hard enough

or maybe stuck myself reading philosophy books, whatever.

P.S.

so i asked myself wtf are we geared upon??? and welp it was obvious in hindsight, and in that one startup i worky on: it's all about building systems, the macro scale. hell we have prereqs for software engineering and another one for the Master's course

and while washing the dishes, i though like: COME ON, THAT'S EASY! IT'S EASY TO FOLLOW PARADIGMS AND JUST MIRROR IT AS IS! ANYONE CAN BUILD A MODULAR SYSTEM, OR EVEN A MONOLITHIC ONE, COME ON!!!!

sorta like the disconnect between businessmen talking about their plans 10 years (they always talk about this) vs friends planning a vacation 12 hours in advance. the first one dont need that much mental flex, only daydreaming.

...probably this is why the trend seems to be microservices, where they all struggle to keep their modularity in check. and now they removed the ethics board. they wanna think about futures, but not the present. may they rot in peace.

p.p.s

ok if you ask me what i wanna learn, it'll be HDL (verilog?) on the mondays, C/Rust on the tuesdays (cant decide. fuck it PSP time), RISC-V on the wednesdays, MIPS on the thursdays (fuck it PSP time), and friday's just Cebuano. saturday and sundays are for dumb time. cant decide how to tho. you can prolly do algorithms on any of those but that would be silly unless it's higher level i seriously wanna learn like functional languages, or languages near the theoretical side of things. we dont have the math touch in our hands and in fact we only have like 2 semesters of calculus.

this isnt prolly gonna be in fruition considering i laze around and dont have the will for anything than breathing and living

im kinda excited what shits will do in our embedded systems class. they said it's all arduino and stuff, why not go nuts? i guess.

there's 2 days of Neural Networks. no we wont build exotic stuff like GANs or something.

sigh. even with all this, i'm still dumb.

[selfshipseaside]

This is a follow up on the cultural pet peeve post, cus I honestly didn't expect so many people to see it! I'm glad though, There are huge problems in this community that most people often ignore, it's good to discuss.

I wanna mention that though I'm native, I'm also white. I understand my place of privilege with that alone. I speak on native issues and am very culturally involved, seeing as I barely see any indigenous self-shippers and was only made aware of the few who were talking under my post! (Hewwo I'm very glad you're around <3) . I like bringing these topics up because though I'm not a person of color, parts of my family very much are (mom and grandma) and I grew up in that space, out on a reservation, I'm native, it's who I am. I find it's incredibly important in every space including niche communities to discuss and make sure we aren't ignoring HUGE issues. Speaking up about it and letting others say their piece is vital. I don't understand how this community got so-- well. Bad. At every turn I see something very insensitive, blatantly racist, or someone is culturally appropriating something and engaging in harmful micro-aggressive behaviors and language. Lots of red flags, if you ask me.

Now, I don't like talking blood quantum because that concept is very uh...colonizer, to say the least. It's used to oppress lots of individuals and still is a huge active issue today. I saw one individual in the tags say that though they are mixed and indigenous, they felt like they didn't have a say in the topic about native people. I wanna just say that **all native and indigenous people are valid, and no matter your upbringing and blood quantum, you are allowed to connect to your culture and have a say in it at any stage of your life**. So to that individual, you are absolutely allowed. Blood quantum is a harmful thing to keep us down, you're always welcome. There are many very specific and nuanced topics to be had when it comes to being native, a lot of people think that if you are white or white passing you cannot be native. This is incorrect. Colonization had breached so many individuals and so many tribes.

My lovely partner, blood quantum-wise, is primarily native, they look native, but were not raised native. Due to colonization she doesn't know what tribe she's connected to and feels unable to connect to that part of herself because of that. It's not fair, and definitely not fair when other people say that because she's white-passing, that she's suddenly not native. It's honestly ridiculous, but I wanna assure all of my fellow natives that you are valid and completely allowed to connect to your culture.

And I know I just said all natives are valid despite blood-- but I will say though, this isn't an invitation for the 0.3 per centers who think their great great great great grandma was a Cherokee princess to think they have a say in the matter, as an actual member of the Cherokee (Tsalagi) tribe, you thoroughly disturb me. Be respectful. That kinda attitude is what gives us a terrible, terrible reputation and buries our actual practices amongst fraudulent crafts and artistry sold as novelty. Though in a roundabout way, it's kinda funny. I'm white, and my grandma is Cherokee. Though the difference is, my grammy isn't a princess. That was most definitely not a thing for us Cherokees. Also-- we didn't wear war bonnets (Headdresses), we wore turbans (the men did, at least). Just a little fun fact for you all. (also a cute fact, today when I saw my grandma for Christmas, she saw my hair growth and how long it was getting, and called it my blanket <3 crying)

Anyways, my point is here is that I wanna thank everyone who did respond and will continue to. I read every last one, and it's honestly terrible to hear what y'all have seen and gone through, but important to know.

People can be so grossly uneducated and downright oppressive. I wanna say that THAT part of the community is not welcome here. If you are not going to respect others, you do not deserve to be catered to. If you are not a person of color or apart of a certain culture, you have no right to dictate how people feel due to your irresponsibility and negligence on profiting (whether emotionally or financially) off of culture that doesn't belong to you. Uplift others. Stay in your lane. You have plenty of them.

[jackieandelorashouldabeencanon]

Lmao what the fuck? You truly know nothing about that conflict if you think Russia is the innocent one. I guess a tyrannical country dropping endless bombs on schools, hospitals, residential buildings and trying to annex territory that doesn't belong to them is only bad when it's the US or an US ally?

Yep.

You about summed it up.

The US is evil. If you are allied with the US I have to assume you're evil.

Ukraine was the country trying to annex territory that didn't belong to it. Is the thing. That's what started all of this. Ukraine decided it wanted something that didn't belong to it. Russia said no. And the US said, welp. we've been looking for an excuse to start another war with Russia.

And here we are.

And. Again. Y'all are not the victims of genocide. Palestine is. War sucks, but YOU ARE NOT BEING GENOCIDED.

Palestine is experiencing a genocide. And you, with your white European ass, are mad I care more about them than I do about Ukraine.

How many US politicians in the house and the senate, in either party, support Ukraine? Just about all of them. How many support Palestine?

One. Just one. And she is Palestinian.

So no. I don't give a fuck about Ukraine. Or it's history of racism. (You wanna talk about the Ukraine and black people? Please, let's go there. Because you're really pissing me off.)

And you know what else? Palestinian people understand that liberation is global. When I talk about the DCR or Sudan or Tigray or HAWAII or anywhere else also suffering due to colonization and capitalism, Palestinians don't slide into my DMs complaining that I don't support them.

YOU, on the other hand, you vile little anonymous cockroach, have come to me twice complaining that I don't support you.

Sooooo hey. Get fucked. I hope we stop sending the UKraine the funding Palestinians should be getting.

[potroasttheghostdogpontificates]

Time for my first rant about politics here. Warning, long, left, angry, and ranty. Grab a snack if you wanna read.

I've become completely exhausted with the white center left. I'm tired and frankly, over these past four years I've come to despise them. I'm making the express decision to abandon platforms like reddit for political discussion, because even though there are a plethora of actual left spaces, the actually welcoming ones to anarchists and anti-war leftists have been settled and colonized nearly totally by liberals and they regularly brigade them, stirring the pot to run cover for this latest crop of neocon democrat fuckery.

I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a political affiliation before. I expect the fascists to have monster brained takes. I expect neocons to call any dissenting opinion about the status quo in my home country of America traitorous. But here we are. The party I supported for nearly a decade and a half, voting for them in literally every election I've ever been legally permitted to vote in from school board to president, my supposed allies even if they weren't 100% as cool as I'd like them to be; throwing a tantrum at the latest failures of electoralism and ineffective neoliberal governance, but flinging shit in the wrong direction. Four years of this after voting for the guy they told me to, even though I wasn't happy about it, and I'm done. I'm tired of it. I can't anymore y'all. Too much bullshit to swallow from the neoliberal center. I knew Biden was going to suck, but I didn't expect the bastard to be so outwardly hostile to everything I'd like to see.

This administration, the liberals have completely shown their ass. The absolutely vile whataboutisms, hostility, doublespeak, rahrah hyper-patriotism, excuses for genocide, vote and value shaming, needless argumentstion, smug condescension and snippering, and simpering cowardice from them has just made me hostile to them and any space they occupy.

I was one of those leftists. The ones who USED to say: "Well it's liberals. They aren't gonna grill us for food, so they aren't THAT bad. Outreach is important, and they're probably amenable to leftism if we remember to extend the olive branch when they reach out. No hon your aunt with the 'I'm With Her' bumper sticker isn't the enemy".

This administration and the actions and voices of their supporters has changed that, radically. Out of all the things that radicalized me, I didn't expect the most extreme radicalization I would experience would be from the motherfucking "gOoD gUy" party. These people have got me in marxist-leninist spaces that excuse the authoritarian actions of places like China, NK, and Russia, because they seem to be the only ones talking sense about what this administration has done and is trying to continue doing. The anarchist spaces currently have to cut through the chaff of an aggressive liberal infestation to even begin to discuss genocide with a sensible head on their shoulders. But the tankies hate them about as much as I have come to, and their zero tolerance stance has at least allowed a breath of clean air while trying to discuss an actual left position.

I should clarify that this goes BEYOND Palestine, by the way.

Tokens. Get. Spent.

As a nonbinary person of color, I've become disgusted by the white center tokenizing trans people to excuse the blatant fact that the democrats AND the republicans have voluntarily entered into an arms race over who can be more draconian on policing black people and shutting down the border to keep out latin people. There are other marginalized people out there people. Communities that are being made invisible so that the token can be used as a get-out-of-jail-free card, because both parties benefit from keeping them under boot. To the trans people out there who think the dems have our back, baby, they don't.

Remember this line. It was to explain to people of color latching onto right-wing movements to secure their safety the reality of their situation:

I had to learn that as a biracial person, so I don't have to learn that as a queer person. To those who haven't, keep it to breast, and watch carefully. This is how it starts. They aren't coming for you yet because they can squeeze some press out of you. That will pass. It always does. Ask brown skinned latin/south americans. The dems used to campaign on how they're treated so poorly under Trump because of his and his party's racism (they have, here in the US). Trump's successor just called them all vicious invaders in a god damn State of The Union, holding up a photo of a white woman and telling a sob story about her death at the hands of "a violent illegal" to appeal to scared white racists, because he's afraid his genocidal aspirations might cost him an election among his hostaged progressive voter base. If Spike Lee had put that in a movie, Renni Eddo-Lodge would ask him to tone it down a little.

They speak out of both sides of their mouths, saying in one breath that we should all set aside our differences and kingmake THEIR chosen and work together to fight the fascists and how they NEED us to save everyone (when they aren't sure they can win an election). Then in the next, sneer with contempt about how they never needed us in the first place and will win this election without the interference of the "children" who dissent to their spiral into fascism, (when they think they have the election locked up or just won one), which they either see it and love it, or are too smug to see it. They tried that in 2016. They still aren't over the sore asses they got from it, even though they're milking the loss for all it's worth, because they keep pushing absolutely atrocious candidates as if it's their "due", because Trump's existence and a post-Trump world are the only places people like that could even hope to be politically viable anymore as zero hour approaches in America. Biden and Clinton needed that scumbag to win a presidency, which is why the party gambled with him in 2020 rather than hand the nomination to Sanders, the more popular, more left candidate. They'd rather gamble with the only ones who could lose to this guy than cede the fact that the voter base has moved more left than they'd like.

"Sorry idealists but unfortunately, "not genocide" isn't on the ballot this year" isn't a fucking excuse, no matter how many times you say that to me. If it is true, fuck that ballot. If it isn't, fuck you for lying. Also, fuck you, the fuck it isn't. There are plenty of anti-genocide candidates running in this election, it just requires the bare minimum of due diligence from the electorate to find the candidates running. Claudia de la Cruz, despite being absolutely buried by pop coverage of this election to where you basically have to be told she exists or stumble upon her by accident, has what might be exactly what the left wants, or at least I do, as far as incremnetalist progress goes, and what the liberals claimed they wanted during Trump. Anti-capitalist expansion, anti-war, pro-marginalized, anti-fascism. But yet, all the pro-Biden camp has to say about her is "who?" and "oh so nobody then". What a genuinely contemptible, vile thing for a person to say.

I expect that from conservatives, but not democrats. Oh wait. And yet, leftists tired of the decades of compromise with the viper that is the center are "politically uninformed" or "unengaged/uneducated voters just doing what the tv tells them to do" because we say Biden as a president has been far worse than we anticipated and has moved to the right of Reagan and Eisenhower in terms of policing and Israel, to where it should be unteneble that he is allowed to occupy the nomination that claims to be left, as if their complete snow-blindness (and I choose that word very carefully) for candidates other than what the Democrat Party Brass feeds them is anything other than political laziness.

Liberals have shown me that for all their fluff about caring about the downtrodden, about doing what's right, it's smoke. Add a qualifier to every stance they have: "--until/unless I can justify it".

They bitch and moan about social media like TikTok as if it's a bastion of misinformation (it is, like all social media) but don't challenge hegemonic media even when they blatantly lie, and no, "just Fox" doesn't fucking count anymore, when multiple outlets have gotten their nuts nailed in scandal, ESPECIALLY regarding Israel (Not a peep when CNN literally reversed the x-axis on a graph to drum up white fear about crime that actually wasn't being reported, for example). No eyebrows raised when TikTok and only TikTok gets limitations put on it to "protect users from disinformation", when literally a few years back the founder of Facebook was getting interrogated by the state for getting caught selling personal information to the highest bidder for profit and having literally zero interest in curtailing the storm of lies being circulated by the platform.

Social media limitation without information and privacy protections and reforms is propaganda effort, simple as, and the fact that TikTok has a lot of young people, the demographic that skews the furthest left and TikTok being the platform that has been sharing most of the horrors happening in Gaza without a spin, should make people concerned when it amd only it is being targeted for "misinformation". The government is targeting the social paltform most outspokenly against what it is doing and getting its fingers into it to silence it. I don't even use TikTok, but I'm old enough to know what a damage control narrative looks like from a politician.

When the dems have, without prompting, threatened to sic the FBI on pro-Palestine protests to "investigate ties to Russia and China" that shows us that the dems are perfectly content to get authoritarian when you don't make shit easy for them. Pelosi walked that shit back, AFTER she got called out for it, but remember the old adage: "When someone tells you who they are, believe them". No one prompted that outburst from her. That's her true face. Sure she dressed it up in cute weasel words about how "they'll be subject to due process and it's just an investigation" blah blah blah, but anyone who has even a working understanding of McCarthyism amd protest strategy should tell you why you shouldn't ever EVER cooperate with that. McCarthy "just wanted to make sure" too. It just so happens that "making sure" under a hierarchical government involves being arrested, (and considering our police force, brutalized in the process) scared shitless, threatened, detained (and as long as they like to) until they've decided they can no longer politically survive the jailings/deaths. The byproduct of this rhetoric is of course you don't need to try someone as a traitor to treat them like one and kill a protest, so you get the dual benefit of authoritarianingly(?) kill a protest of your government and pretend you're a just government of the people. Don't buy it. Accusation will be enough to kill a protest stone dead if you spook enough people, because all of our lives are already dangling by a thread. It's risking enough to take time off work when a few hours of pay can determine eating or going hungry for a week for far too many people in this god-forsaken country, it's a deatb sentence to be tried as a criminal. It worked for McCarthy, don't let these milquetoast posh versions of Reaganites pull the same stunt. At least McCarthy had enough sack to be an evil bastard publicly instead of simpering when interrogated.

"I'm against racism..... until I can justify it" "I'm against war.... unless I can justify it" " I'm against draconian borders..... unless I can justify it" "I reject genocide.... until I can justify it". "And we'll kill you if you resist enough".

Makes em seem a lot more honest when you put it that way.

I hate how cowardly they defend this shit. I hate that I have to add parentheses to highlight the obvious to points I make that no leftist would actually make, on the off-chance that some miserable Biden campaign social media quote-doctors me into a republican.

They pretend that they're the politically engaged, they're the "big picture" "adult" voters, or, even more egregiously, that they're the empathetic ones.

If you keep a rabid dog loose in your yard, you save a shit load of money not having to build a fence. Controlled opposition is manipulation.

Single-issue is fucking rich, considering the only defense they can angle for this guy at this point is "but trans people though!" As if any of the bones they toss will actually make the situation for trans people better. It's liberal identity politics at its absolute pathetic.

Trans people can join the army again! (If they can survive the rampant bullying, sexual assault, and white supremacy in the armed forced that no one in authority has any intention of addressing and face no threat of repercussion for that failure because the US increases their budget every year with no regards to stopping for any reason)

If trans kids get misgendered or their pronouns disrespected at school, they can sue! (Provided they have access to the means of effective legal representation and aren't under a judge who is not amenable to their side of the issue, which is unlikely due to the inroads of privilege necessary to become a judge in the first place ensures that a frighteningly big percentage of them are white, upper-middle-class and above, conservative, and isolated from the community at large.)

Good news! Trans people won't be discriminated against in hiring! (Until the EO times out because let's face it, they aren't gonna draft an amendment to enshrine that federally any time soon, and also ignoring the fact that a majority of hiring discrimintaion happens under the table and in secret, and is facilitated by at-will employment practices and allowances, AND a majority of trans-discrimination in the workplace happens after hiring, when trans people start to publicly transition where they face bullying or firings). Do nothing about the plethora of anti-trans bills worming their way through the legal system on this country, meaning the trams community has a literal ticking clock over them. (Unless they help the republicans pass them like in West Virginia). Do nothing about homelessness being a death sentence that is nearly impossible to escape or seek aid for, even though the trans community is disproportionally homeless because of bigoted families disowning them. No, they won't ever ever be allowed to go to the doctor or safely access transitionary care without a shitload of front-loaded privilege to financial stability that only some have.

We did it! Trans people saved. Now vote for us. Because we burned the black vote bridge with our vicious policing practices even after pretending to side with them during the 2020 protests, and the hispanic vote bridge with our scapegoating of them and our draconian border, migrant, and asylum policies, and the arab vote bridge with our blatant spreading of misinformation about a genocide facing their people and families. Screw the poor, black people, arab people, hispanic people (but only the brown ones, if you don't have an accent or melanin we won't be able to tell and will let you do as you please), leftists, protestors, and trans people (eventually) but we aren't gonna bite you trans people. Vote. Do it. Do it now. You don't wanna see what will happen to you if you don't. Oh no not us. Just an associate. We won't stop them if they come for you. Give us all the authority over you so we can prevent it. We'll do it this time, we swear.

"You're a single issue voter, like a loser" says the liberal to the person who opposes genocide regardless of party (it's a pretty big fucking issue, no?) But this is the person who sees the state of affairs and says "but trans people" without even asking them what they need to survive. How dare you dangle their lives for political gains because you're too cowardly to fight your own battles. My fellow trans people, don't swallow this. All they're doing with their "buying time" is allowing the situation to decay unseen for a few more years, after which, it will be too late to stop things becoming catastrophically bad unless we literally fight for our lives.

If you've read this far, you've already been here for days. Took me a while to organize my thoughts in downtime between work. So one final point so we aren't both here for weeks.

I can't stand the sneeringly condescension if liberalism-as-default as a method to defend their position. They bite back on leftists who don't support the center as "well there's no leftist on the ballot right now. Why do you always 'pull this' during election season instead of a ground-up movement over time?? Bring me a leftist and I'll vote for him." Or my favorite, "what are YOU doing about it??" I hate this counterargument for multiple reasons. Let's have some fun with formatting and list them.

It tacitly admits that the speaker doesn't support anything for an ideological reason. They support people who can "win" neoliberal electoralism and nothing more. They care about winning. Doesn't matter who does or for what reason. They support the establishment, for better or worse.

This is also taking as read the idea that they will not support leftism in any meaningful capacity until it reaches hegemonic status, despite (or perhaps because of) it needing support from multple sources to get to that point at all. A Catch-22 from someone who is basically saying "I refuse to cooperate with you until you get me to cooperate with you and you become the default which requires me cooperating with you". They won't help the left get off the ground, even though it needs them at least out of the way to do so, but will say they will get out of the way once it does get off the ground. This is why the left says the liberals hold progressives and leftists "hostage"

It demands the left do the work of justifying and legitimizing itself to compare to THEIR chosen default, while admitting they have zero intention of doing the same. Liberalism is default. Therefore, the left has to justify itself, the liberals don't, and anyone who asks them to is being disingenuous or unfair. They demand legitimization from their opposition, and won't give it.

They are admitting they have been ignoring leftism and only pay attention during election season, because it threatens their hegemony.

They are ignoring the fact that the reason the left raises so much stink during election season is because the candidates claiming to be left and what the center champions as what leftists supposedly want have yet again slid right to win said election. The left is sounding the alarm bell as it happens. It's not the left's fault the center is choosing, yet again, to ignore it.

They're pretending that the center and right won't unite to kill the left if it ever DOES get that far, even without them (more than likely because that would include themselves in the ranks, and that's a bad look when trying to high-horse a political discussion with a leftist). This includes party formation or any sort of on-the-ground organization like protests. The left will be killed stone-dead unless the center starts putting its money where its mouth is, because the center will be the one holding the knife. They know this. They don't want you to. Ruins the surprise.

They're demanding you fix the problem they made while also refusing to compromise with you to do so. "We've done nothing and we're all put of ideas" has gone from a derogative to an accusation. Liberals have shown themselves to be painfully bad at media analysis.

It's a blatant trap to bait out organizational efforts from psy-ops to break them or infiltrate them. Chances are higher than you might think that someone asking you how you organize is a cop trying to insert operatives into the ranks to disrupt. The liberals trying to ask "well how are YOU organizing?" are doing the oppressors work for them, even if unintentional.

The demand for organization of politicial ingress into hierarchical electoralism while ignoring the truth that for organization of that level to even get off the ground requires a degree of privilege and legitimization that the left has been barred from accessing outside of violent revolution, while also quietly admitting they don't intend to give that to them unless they take it, and they will resist them taking it

And that's it for now. Rant over.

Jeez did you get all this way? I'm impressed. And thanks for hearing me out. As a reward, if you feel slighted by my words, here are some verbal face pets to ease my point and position.

No, I don't vote shame. If you do vote for the dems, either because you support them ideologically, vote tactically and genuinely believe they are a good option, don't vote, or vote third party, you won't get any oushback from me. I'm an anarchist. I believe it's your right, completely and fully, to do whatever you want with that vote of yours. If you want Biden to represent you, go for it. I do not. Under any circumstances. If you vote tactically or genuinely believe in them to protect queer people or stop the onslaught of the right, if you believe that neoliberal electoralism will help us, I don't think you're evil, I believe you're misled. I feel upset on your behalf that you've been lied to. No, I don't think you're unintelligent, young, gullible, or naive. I believe you've been lied to. You can't be "enlightened" or whatever you personally call being woke if you've never seen what the truth looks like. I don't blame a propagandized people for being propagandized. You don't blame a person for believing a lie. You get angry at the liar for deceiving them.

If you think Trump might be worse, you're probably not wrong. He's an ugly kind of neoliberal, the kind that has melted into a fascist. But if you think he DEFINITELY will be, I genuinely believe you to have not been paying enough attention. Will he be better? Absolutely fucking not. No way in hell. See? There's that clarification and emphasis that I have to do to prevent bad-faith characterization that will happen anyway again. But if you can't recognize Biden as a lateral move at best, I honestly don't trust you. Sorry, but I don't. Shit's bad out here for more than white queers. Please remember that. The LGBTQ community is not a hegemonic white one. Liberals don't have a target on your back, yet, but that's because it's easier to shoot at us first. The cops Biden and Harris like putting on the streets won't ask me my pronouns before they gun me down. They're gonna see my afro-textured hair and skin-color first, and go off that. They're gonna see me at a protest and declare me a dissident before they even ask me about my bisexual spreadsheet. Solidarity is important, because they're coming for us all. Avoid class reductionism AND neoliberal identity politics. Both poison the well.

To all the white trans people who are fucking scared, I see you. We're all scared. I don't mean to diminish this fear or disregard it, because I get it. These bastard hegemons at the top think they can push and pull us using the fear they themselves create to turn us against each other. I remind you not to fear. If they could have destroyed us they would have succeeded long ago. I have zero faith things will even be in a staid equilibrium under Biden's next term. Mutual aid will survive literally anything these bastards can throw at us all, but we must remember to stay true to our values and communities and remember solidarity to the allies. We will get through this like we have everything else, I promise. I stand with you. I intend to fight for you if I have to. Most everyone on the left will. Electoralism for neocons like Biden and what the dems are trying to shove down our throats will not, remember that. Vote, if you want, but don't trust them to save us. He thinks protecting your pronouns in school are enough but won't expand hate crime laws. He's jerking us around.

And that's it. Here's some genuine literal face pats to thank you for hearing me out. Go with peace and happiness and love. Love strong and live your truth. And fuck these god damn liberals. Solidarity, support. We're gonna get through this, together, like we always have, without their help.

[teacup-tai]

Summer Fics by Tai

I just wanted to rant a bit and reflect on the last 2 months. Well, this summer came with sadness. My 14 years long relationship came to an end, or maybe a semi-colon (I hope so). I had SO MANY emotions going on! So I stress read as always and wrote SEVEN FICS(!!!) only six posted, after months of writer's block.

I'm writing this post because I want to appreciate myself and creativity and resilience and all these nice stories that I managed to write in a very short amount of time. I'm proud of all them, they are *so diverse* and *so special* in their own ways:

Breaking wild roses (stings like love's pain) - 1.4k, E, Pansmione

I feel like a scream is stuck inside my chest, creeping up in the deep dark hollow of my throat. It’s a mix of pain and agony. So to keep it down, I open my mouth and fill it with your soft, tender flesh. The bronze skin of your shoulder right against my tongue.

I'm honestly proud of this smut with feels and I need to thank special people who helped, be prompting or betaing this story; thank you @the-starryknight, @sketchyblondes @phenomenalasterisk

The Truth Runs Wild - 3k, E, Blairon

It’s Harry’s fault and his whole ‘gay awakening’ and all the shit he had to hear Harry talk him through, in the name of friendship and supportive brotherhood. But honestly, if Zabini licking his lips can be this sensual, what could he do with a dick in his mouth? Ron flushes, because he cannot be honestly thinking about Blaise Zabini and blowjobs. Like, he’s straight, right. Right?

and it's sequel: Only Fools Fall - 5.3k, E, Blairon

Blaise planted a kiss against Ron’s temple and moved away to watch him with big black attentive eyes. “I only wanna make you feel good,” he assured him. And Ron felt himself blush, because Zabini was looking soft and warm and it was making things inside Ron’s chest turn and pull. This was getting way too real. Or: Ron wants more, then he gets pretty confused. So Tai decided to write a Blaise/Ron love story out of it.

This wouldn't have happened without the nonnie who boldly asked my opinion on Blairon, lol. And without the amazing help of this lovely alpha-beta crew: @erajakira , @olliemaye, @crazybutgood . I had such great fun writing these fics, I'm in love with this universe for real! Blairon for the win! this wouldn't be the same without the mutual hype of @thusspoketrish and @anaxandria-writes for our lovely August with Gusto: Blasie Zabini Appreciation Month!

For God is Love - 3k, M, Drarry

1 John 4:8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Or: Tai decided to write a religious AU fic, in which draco and harry are catholic priests, bc I wanted to read it :)

Got the amazing help of @corvuscrowned and Jay, and honestly if it weren't for @tackytigerfic also enjoying this trope it wouldn't have happened. I LOVED writing such a different trope and mood than I normally write. So thank you y'all!

Space Bodies - 1.5k, M, Drarry

She tastes like a love story. Or: my dream came true and I wrote a drarry fic with trans!draco being this gorgeous woman and I can die happy now.

It made my day to write this fic for the @drarrymicrofic with the amazing help of @softlystarstruck, @atgranger and Logan.

Claraboia - microfic, Drarry

"Look what I've found," Draco says in a surprised and tender voice. Harry is still learning all the nuances of his voice and this one is new.

BIG thank you to @onbeinganangel and @the-starryknight for making me dive into the microfic realm.

I also want to thank InnerLilith for betaing a gen fic about Pansy that is not pubished yet. And all the amazing friends from the drarry squad that keep me going when life is shit, specially @sitp-recs who holds my hand when time zone allows and hypes me up.

THANK YOU TO ALL MY READERS! YOU MADE SUCH A DIFFERENCE IN MY SUMMER SADNESS, YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

I got a new job in a new city and I'm moving out tomorrow. I dunno when I will be able to write in the forseeable future. BUT THANK YOU. This last year has been filled with up and downs. And me being back to the drarry fandom is @quicksilvermaid fault, bc of the @hd-hurtfest from last year. Without your prompt I wouldn't have written my sadass drarry fic, and stayed for the long run, and so many things in my life changed bc of that fic. I'm emotionally healthier now and I'm moving forwards, thanks Q!

Cheers folks! Sending love, tai.

[pinene]

I went traveling last spring break to visit California and we drove through a bunch of other states along the way and tbh it really changed my mind about america. Despite all the problems literally everywhere here I don't think its fair to put down an entire state just because of stereotypes and politicians (especially the heavily gerrymandered ones in the south) bc every part of america has something beautiful to offer!!! Also I support California independence now

Literally! I mean honestly I am starting to think that in general, shitting on someone bc of where they're from is maybe.. not the move? I will admit sometimes it's funny, but when it comes from a place of "where you are from has a lot of problems".. that's kind of fucking stupid bc there's a strong chance the person you're saying that to is aware of the problems and is perhaps even victim to them? Yeah like the way ppl talk about the south like it's just some conservative racist hotbed with no rights and everyone that lives there is ignorant it's like. Fucking ridiculous lol. A law could be passed in Texas or Florida that's like "we can hunt trans children for sport now" and people on this website will be like "lol you should've thought about that before living there!!!" and suggest that anyone who wants to have an actually good time should move from their hometown. It's ridiculous. I get that a lot of you really want to leave where you're from but plenty of people don't and that's totally valid.

Also? America is literally gorgeous lol it's an objective fact. I don't see too many people try to deny that anymore but it was hot for a while. The problem, as always, is that y'all just lack any kind of nuance, and can't fathom being against the SITUATIONS and the POLITICS of a location, without being against the PEOPLE and the LANDSCAPE. Like if you wanna talk shit about.. Minnesota, bc it's cold and you hate being cold, okay. But saying like, the Dakotas are stupid and boring because there's no major cities there and the politics are conservative, is just crazy! that's people's home! not to mention this is all STOLEN LAND!! Talking shit about an area because the people that violently colonized 200 years ago it left a very boring, conservative populous in their wake is...not good?

Anyway yeah Californian independence etc. and I wouldn't object to taking oregon and washington with us cuz I love pine trees. Maybe we could also take Hawaii and then immediately give them independence bc the USgovt prob wouldnt?

[pocfansmatter]

Okay I said before I was going to get more in depth with blood quantum eventually so now is as better time than any I guess. Mind you I'm speaking as a Native American meaning an Indigenous person from America. Specifically from 2 southern California tribes. I cannot speak for all Native or Indigenous people. I can only speak for myself, I can’t even speak for my tribe. However most Natives tend to have the same view when it comes to the blood quantum debate. From this point on blood quantum will be shortened to BQ & Native American to Native(s).

Originally this was gonna be a reply to another comment but decided to make it it's own post so I don't associate my blog with that anti Indigenous one. Please try to read the whole post before clicking the articles. I screenshotted the main parts to keep the discussion going. Feel free to click on all the articles because they are good & most of them are from Native run news websites.

I was gonna do this with a read more tag but my laptop doesn't want to work. I'm literally getting anyther one on Thanksgiving but my old one doesn't cooperate sorry so y'all are gonna get a long post. 😕

So let's start with the basics. What is blood quantum?

"Blood quantum laws or Indian blood laws are laws in the United States and the former Thirteen colonies that define Native American identity by percentages of ancestry. ... For instance, a person who has one parent who is a full-blood Native American and one who has no Native ancestry has a blood quantum of 1/2."

In case that was confusing if one person is "full blood native" they are considered 4/4. Meaning they have no relatives who are of any other race or ethnicity. If the "full blood native" has a child with a non Native person the child would have a BQ of 1/2 Native blood. If that child has a child with a non Native that child will be considered 1/4. This will continue to get lower & lower unless the child has a baby with another Native. Then the BQ raises or stays the same depending on the other parents BQ.

Now that the definition is out of the way lets get into the issue with this.

This is a good article that narrowed down an issue with Pharrell wearing a headdress. I wanna focus on one part of the article though.

"... deeply connected to their Native culture & live it every day."

"Having Native American ancestors doesn't get you off the hook if you don't bother to do the homework."

So I mentioned before that a lot of Natives don't consider BQ as a proper way of measuring your culture. Being Native isn't something you can pull out when it's convenient like for a photoshoot. Its every single day. It's in the words we speak, in the clothes we wear & in the food we cook. Same as any other culture.

Asian people don't wake up not Asian. Black people don't wake up not Black.

So why is do some people pull out the Native card when it is convenient? Like Pharrell did or Elizabeth Warren claims.

This article sums it up well but I wanna focus on the last 2 paragraphs.

Link to the full article:

There's similarities in both articles by 2 different Native authors from 2 different news websites.

They both speak about connections to our culture. A DNA test cannot measure ones Indigenous Ancestry because being Indigenous is much more than something in your blood.

I made a post asking some questions that might help understand if one is Indigenous or not. Now I'm not saying these are all the questions nor that I'm the expert on this. These are just STARTER questions to help people understand what it means to be Native.

Does the tribe you claim, claim you?

Have you been to the reservation?

Do you participate in the community?

Have you met your family from the tribe?

Do you know your history, traditions, anything about the tribe you claim?

The big one is are you claimed. You cannot claim a tribe that doesn't claim you. Now I'm not saying the entirety of the tribe has to know you personally. I'm not even saying you have to stand in front of the tribal council & ask them if they claim you. A claim can be made as little as just your family saying "this person is one of us".

The reason I bring this up is because multiple tribes have in the past & continue the practice of "adopting" a person into their tribe. There's many examples of this. Some can be adopted because they married into a tribe. Non Natives & Natives of other tribes alike have been adopted into tribes. There can be legal adoptions like adopting a child. And countless other examples.

A lot of the time biologically those members aren't apart of the tribe & cannot be enrolled but are still viewed as a member by the community.

For personal example, my sister has been adopted by my tribe. She's actually an enrolled member from another tribe & technically my cousin but was taking away by CPS & my family took her in. She grew up & still lives on my reservation. She is from another reservation. Although her tribe still claims her as a member my tribe also does. People in my community know her as a member of my family & have grown up with her. She knows many of our traditions & practices some ceremonies with us that are specific to my tribe. No one in our tribe has expressed any issue with this so far & even if they did they would have a stern talking to. We are even in the process of organizing her to be buried on our tribal land instead of hers. Her choice & we are okay with it.

Now I want to point out another way people can be considered Native even if they aren't enrolled or cannot answer those questions properly.

Let's look at something called "reconnecting Natives".

What is a reconnecting Native?

A reconnecting Native is someone of Native Ancestry who for whatever reason has been removed from their culture, family, reservation, etc so they do not know them & are actively trying to learn those things so they can reclaim their Native roots.

So, how does this happen? This is actually a very common issue in the community.

One of the main ways a Native might become disconnected is through the process of Residential Schools or Indian Boarding Schools. What is that? Here's a snippet of an article to help explain.

Of course here is the link:

The official motto of these schools was "kill the Indian, save the man” and if you think it sounds awful I promise you, it was much worse than you could imagine.

There's a movie on Netflix called Indian Horse which I have not watched yet but is based off a novel by an Indigenous author that looks at these Boarding Schools if you wish to check that out.

The goals of these schools were to strip Indigenous children of their culture. They were beaten, starved, punished of things as simple as speaking in their languages. A lot of them didn't even speak English. It was illegal to keep your kids from this school & often times tribal children went to these schools and never returned to their family. Natives who attended these schools or are children of children who attended these schools more often than not stop practicing their culture or forget it. In that way they become "disconnected".

Those members can if chosen too began the process of reconnecting.

I found this really good article going a little more in depth on the do's & don't's of reconnecting.

But here's a screenshot of important parts.

Granted this is a long process. Lifelong. Every journey to reconnect is difficult & very different from others. It depends on your tribe & community. Some of them make it easier & some make it harder. It's up to the individual to put in the work.

Now I don't want to make it like being a connected Native is easy. Yes it's easier but connected Natives also put in work to live their culture everyday.

Now what does this have to do with blood quantum? As you can see none of these articles about being Native or even a reconnecting Native mention blood quantum or DNA being a requirement.

If one is Japanese & someone asks "how are you Japanese?" What would the answer be?

"Because I just am. Because my parents are Japanese."

If someone is white & has kids those kids are white, correct?

So if it's so easy to explain for other cultures why does mine require math? Why are some of my family members not enrolled members despite having Native parents & growing up on the reservation? Why do my people have to actively think about the DNA results of our children if we choose to have them?

Because of BQ. Its a tool created by colonizers that are forced upon us. If we do not abide by the rules & requirements the government sets in place we run the very big risk of

Losing our status of a Native American tribe.

Losing our land & land rights.

Losing funding from the federal government.

Losing our housing.

Losing Healthcare.

Losing our basic citizenship rights.

The thing about BQ is it's designed so that we fail. If we fail to keep a certain amount of enrolled tribal members in a tribe then the government can break treaties & take away our land & things that are rightfully ours.

BQ is a lose/lose situation all around for us as well as extremely racist.

Because of the BQ requirements Natives actively worry about who they have children with. Some don't date outside of the their culture in fear of their children not being seen as legally Native. The problem here is a lot of the tribe is related. The issue of inbreeding increases. How do we solve that problem? Well we can have children with Natives of another tribe. But there's a problem here too. Most tribes do not allow what we call dual enrollment. Both of my tribes for example don't allow this. Which means one would have to pick which tribe to enroll their child. That means one of the tribes will lose out on a member. So that's another way identities are erased using BQ.

Okay I think I'm going to end this here. There is so much more I could've added. I also could've expanded on residential schools, what it means to be Indigenous, & reconnecting Natives but I wanted to keep it focused on BQ. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask or research on your own. We're still here. We aren't stuck in the 1800's. We weren't all killed by cowboys but the government is still actively trying to erase us.

[nixthehomunculus]

Not that I don't agree that a lot of cultural and traditional influence on poc has us stunted in certain ways, but this white person very clearly has a vendetta.

First things I wanna point out are the "hope it makes black ppl angry," and the "y'all" sentiments. It happens too often that when white people get fed up enough to say something they say it with such ego, and so much irony. Op wants to talk about discrimination, and equality in what essentially sounds like the same idea behind reverse racism as a defense, and ever so fittingly, to do so, they perform this condescension.

Kinda weird kinda sus kinda strange that they hope this makes black people angry. Kinda ODD that they kick this epiphany off with a marginalization. It's unpleasant.

And to address the questions, yes, black people are aware of discrimination, black people are aware that people of colour can be discriminatory. It isn't just a wild guess that I can say that black people face discrimination from other black people just as much, and that it is talked about and that it's important that these barriers get proper discussion. I can also say that this isn't some kind of antithesis to white people, like this doesn't need to exist as a "funny how y'all understand this for white people but not poc" example. In fact addressing it should involve the understanding and practice of decolonization because where do we think the biggest influence for discrimination comes from? Over the course of history and globalization, we can look back on laws being made, education intertwined in colonization around the world, and religious movements.

This just looks like another white person or another person bought into defending white people rather than tackling oppression at its roots.

This is prolly why white people are so unaware of the discussions going on in poc communities tbh, leave stuff like that out of discussions, this brings up nothing new or helpful and it's just aggressive against poc. Pretty weird.