Bi Poli-Sci Guy

"In the original Trek, Khan, with his brown skin, was an Übermensch, intellectually and physically perfect, possessed of such charisma and drive that despite his efforts to gain control of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk (and many of the other officers) felt admiration for him.

And that’s why the role has been taken away from actors of colour and given to a white man. Racebending.com has always pointed out that villains are generally played by people with darker skin, and that’s true … unless the villain is one with intelligence, depth, complexity. One who garners sympathy from the audience, or if not sympathy, then — as from Kirk — grudging admiration. What this new Trek movie tells us, what JJ Abrams is telling us, is that no brown-skinned man can accomplish all that. That only by having Khan played by a white actor can the audience engage with and feel for him, believe that he’s smart and capable and a match for our Enterprise crew."

Marissa Sammy on Star Trek: Into Whiteness.

perfect commentary which parallels what Rawles was saying earlier about the possibility of Moriarty being a person of color: 

• “…The actual issue is that black people aren’t often allowed to play full and complete characters, and an antagonist who isn’t unintelligent, thuggish cannon fodder is just as much of a rarity for black men as the stubbly hero who saves the world or wtfever. “
• “…The stereotype in no way intersects with brilliant geniuses who choose to step outside of the boundaries of society in order to exercise their intellect while having no concern for lesser beings.
  
  Or to break it down further: the problematic stereotype regarding black people is that of being, in essence, subhuman. Characters of the Moriarty (and Holmes) archetype are rooted in being superhuman.”

You see? It’s more complicated than “people of color get typecast as villains.”

Black people get typecast as an extremely specific type of villain - they’re thugs, brutish and animalistic. South Asian actors are similarly typecast as scary oppressive (usually coded Muslim) terrorists.

But when your villain is of the superhuman archetype? When they’re brooding antiheroes, when they’re nuanced, when they’re multi-faceted?

They’re white.

(And check out this post on the glorification of white criminality in shows like Dexter, Breaking Bad, Weeds, Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, etc.)

(via stfuconservatives)

"

As many as 15 percent of freshmen at America’s top schools are white students who failed to meet their university’s minimum standards for admission, according to Peter Schmidt, deputy editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. These kids are “people with a long-standing relationship with the university,” or in other words, the children of faculty, wealthy alumni and politicians.

According to Schmidt, these unqualified but privileged kids are nearly twice as common on top campuses as Black and Latino students who had benefited from affirmative action.

Ten myths about affirmative action (via linzyxxxxx)

This is EXTREMELY blatant on college campuses. The fact that these things need to be clarified is sad.

(via newwavefeminism)

Wow, so I posted this almost a year ago under a different name and now it’s going around again.

Still important, though.

(via sociolab)

(via sociolab)

"You and Anderson Cooper have the same coming out calendar week in common, but in many obvious ways, you couldn’t be more different. Anderson Cooper is an heir to one of America’s great Industrial Age fortunes and a network professional whose maleness and whiteness backed by his considerable accomplishments guarantee him work. You are a young Black man from New Orleans who fled your still struggling city. You didn’t arrive in Los Angeles with generational wealth and privilege, only the beautiful lyrics and melodies that danced through you and your dream of making it in a music industry whose sand castles were crumbling."

Excerpt of dream hampton’s message to Frank Ocean  (via sexualsportswear)

Rereblogged with correct attribution

(via nom-chompsky)

(Source: holmavik, via mohandasgandhi)

"To be female and poor in itself attracts a unique stigma. The 1980s saw the remarkable rise of the ‘welfare queen’ as popular bogey (wo)man of choice in the USA. This was fuelled by Reagan’s ideological crusade against an ‘excessive’ ‘soft’ welfare system and driven by racist and sexist stereotypes of ‘lazy’ African-American women, often single mothers. Indeed, the single mother is a recurring motif in the rhetoric surrounding welfare and benefits across the Western world. The idea that single women ‘churn out’ babies in order to generate more income or obtain free housing is commonplace in the UK and was a core part of the vivid American ‘welfare queen’ stereotype. Attacks on the integrity of single mothers are common; they are portrayed as less capable parents - despite evidence to the contrary - and are improbably blamed for a host of social ills, including, predictably, the riots that took place in the UK in the summer of 2011. The prevalent stigma borne by poor females in many societies is viscerally illustrated by British newspaper columnist James Delingpole who described several of the “great scourges” of contemporary Britain: “aggressive all-female gangs of embittered, hormonal, drunken teenagers; gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye” (The Times newspaper, April 13, 2006 ). Disturbingly, the stigma of female poverty and single motherhood has become embedded in public policy in many different countries: women are all too often the ‘accidental’ victims of supposedly gender neutral measures, such as budget cuts and welfare reform."

The feminisation of poverty and the myth of the ‘welfare queen’ | openDemocracy (via sociolab)

"

What would it look like if the LGBT movement had a racial justice agenda? Well, for starters, we’d see our struggle for equality tied to other movements for justice, not just by analogy. So, for example, there’s been a noticeable silence about Trayvon Martin on most of the mainstream gay blogs, probably because most (white) gay folks don’t see the case as “our issue.” But as Zach Stafford recently pointed out here on HuffPost, gay folk should care about Trayvon Martin because all of us who are “outsiders” — whether because of sexual orientation, gender non-conformity, or race — can be targets of violence.

When we say that the gay right movement is the new civil rights movement, we’re playing into the divisive racial politics of NOM. We have to do better than “gay is the new black.” We have to see that the fight for sexual equality hasn’t replaced the fight for racial equality, because that’s not over. When the LGBT movement moves beyond shallow slogans like “gay is the new black” to embrace a racial justice agenda that sees our struggle as tied to others, then we’ll have truly won a victory against opponents like NOM that can only see “gays and blacks” as an easy place to drive a wedge.

Moving Beyond ‘Gay Is the New Black’: NOM’s Divisive Racial Politics and the LGBT Movement’s Need for a Racial Justice Agenda

(via queerdesi)

I have seen discussion on a number of gay blogs but I guess those aren’t the “mainstream” ones the commenter is referring to in this essay.

(via whenindoubtapplymoreglitter)

I absolutely abhor the mainstream - lol! J/K! Who are we kidding? It’s the WHITE gay  movement - white voices, white faces and nothing else allowed.

75% of anti-queer violence is against queer PoCs but I see nothing but white faces on “It Gets Better” or on the news when it comes to violence against queer peoples.  

It’s not so much appropriating the struggle of Black Americans when white gays say “[white] gay is the new Black” as much as stealing, erasing, trivializing, editing, twisting and tearing apart Black people’s struggles in the world.

White gays trivialize the mass murder (the ever-justified police brutality/self defense)/abuse/marginalization/sexual assault/ETC^1000 of Black Americans, whether queer or cis+hetero today when they dare to be so stupid and racist as to compare being white+gay to being Black+cis/hetero, never mind Black+queer. The white gay movement is not Kosher at all.  It’s unhealthy for all, and incredibly dangerous for PoCs in the world.

(via pluckyduck)

(via lipsredasroses)