QUEERING THE GAME OF LIFE

quarequeen:

QUARE: queer people of color who love other men and women & appreciate black culture and community//works, thinks, feels, acts against all forms of oppression// sexuality and gender always intersect with racial subjectivity//excess of discursive & epistemological meanings//speaks across and articulates identities

E. Patrick Johnson, Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology

                   

this is the one of the texts for my black queer diaspora aesthetic class and so far it is thoroughly amazing. love love love it.

"The new myth is that the world is full of black Americans prospering unfairly at white expense, and anecdotal evidence abounds. The stories about the incompetent black co-worker always leave out two things: the incompetent white co-workers and the talented black ones. They also leave out the tendency of so many managers to hire those who seem most like themselves when young.

‘It seems like if you’re a white male you don’t have a chance,’ said another young man on a campus where a scant 5 percent of his classmates were black. What the kid really means is that he no longer has the edge, that the rules of a system that may have served his father well have changed. It is one of those good-old-days constructs to believe it was a system based purely on merit, but we know that’s not true. It is a system that once favored him, and others like him. Now sometimes — just sometimes — it favors someone different."

Anna Quindlen (via wretchedoftheearth)

(via thatneedstogo)

(Source: criticalqueer)

"Black pride was born from oppression, persecution, genocide, slaughter, and persistent pain. It was not born out of narcissism, nor for the purpose of declaring superiority. Black Pride is a celebration of life, as though to say “We’re here. We’re alive. We’re resisting.” It is a way of honoring the past and challenging the future."

BookishBoi (via bookishboi)

(via fatbrownowl-deactivated20130302)

White people were in the movie Precious

howtobeterrell:

They were stage left otherwise known as the oppressive welfare system, the housing projects where Precious lives, the food system she consumed, the harmful beauty standards she could never live up to that robbed her of her self worth…

White people viewed the movie exactly how I expected: About black pathology, black pain and suffering.

I viewed it as I read the book: this is being black in an oppressive white world.

(via stfuconfederates-deactivated201)

"Also, the white trans experience has trumped trans people of color’s experience. This is another factor that arrests development for some trans people of color. We go online and do research on transfolks and only get the white trans experience, which isn’t ours- so there’s no way that we could be trans, right? Also there are other issues in being out and trans which seems to be what white transmen push for. As they become visible as trans, there may be backlash…but they are still a white man with privilege. As soon as we transition to be black men, our lives get much more difficult- especially if we are trans organizers. There is a lot of pressure to stay “stealth” and invisible within communities of color, because who really wants the added marginalization and discrimination? It is hard enough to be a black man. Now you’ve got to worry about being accepted within your community, church, schools and jobs? Many say- No, thank you. And you know …some white transmen call us cowards for that. Cowards. Because they have no idea the experience of intersecting identities of being a person of color and queer among other identities."

The New Masculinity- Defining ourselves,semerging from our cocoons (via biyuti)

(via nueva-bordena)

vintagenoire:

jasper, texas. october 29, 1959.

fatpeopleofcolor:

laborreguitamestiza:

mylifeasafeminista:

As I’ve said, Alexis is one of my good friends, an incredibly talented woman, and a beautiful human being.

If she does not reach her goal of $9,000 dollars by next week, her project will not be funded and she will not get any of the money that has already been pledged.

Please, please, please, help her with this project!  Your support does not have to be monetary - you can also help by sharing the link or reblogging this post.

dont have much to donate, but signal boooost!

If you got a few extra dollars donate to send Alexis abroad!!

As of this post she needs about 5,000!

SIGNAL BOOST!

REBLOG

FORWARD, EMAIL, TEXT WHATEVA THE LINK TO ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE ESPECIALLY IF YOU KNOW THEY GOT SOME SPARE CHANGE TO GIVE.

Let’s help Alexis’ educational goals come to fruition!

"What made him unfamiliar and dangerous was not his hatred for white people but his love for blacks, his apprehension of the horror of the black condition, and the reasons for it, and his determination so to work on their hearts and minds that they would be enabled to see their condition and change it themselves."

James Baldwin on Malcolm X.

(Source: chucklew, via thatneedstogo)

Gay black youths go from attacked to attackers

notime4yourshit:

Whenever there’s trouble around the Chinatown and Gallery Place Metro stations in the District, the finger of blame often points to a most unusual group of suspects: a black gay gang called Check It.

Depending on whom you talk to, they’re just a bunch of mischievous gender benders and drama queens, vulnerable gay youths seeking safety in numbers. Or, they’re one of the largest, more aggressive gangs in the city.

To hear the leader of Check It tell it, there may be some truth to both.

“I just got tired of people beating on me and calling me faggie,” Tayron Bennett, 21, told me recently. He’d helped to organize Check It while a student at Hine Junior High School. Other gay youths from his Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast soon joined, followed by gay youths from throughout the city.

D.C. police estimate that Check It has a core membership of about 20 and counts between 50 and 100 others as “associates.”

“At first, I tried fighting bullies one-on-one, but they don’t fight fair; they fight two and three on one,” Bennett said. So the youths got together and “started carrying mace, knives, brass knuckles and stun guns, and if somebody messed with one of us then all of us would gang up on them.”

Check It.

Read More

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

Family of Black Man Sues Whites in Killing

notime4yourshit:

The lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven people who had piled into the two vehicles that night, charging that while some were directly responsible for assaulting and killing Mr. Anderson, others were negligent because they acted as lookouts and did not try to help Mr. Anderson.

One of the people yelled “white power” during the attack, and others used a racial slur and bragged about the killing, according to the investigators.

The district attorney for Hinds County, Robert Shuler Smith, has said he will try to implicate other teenagers when he takes the case to a grand jury, expected to happen this month.

The F.B.I. has also gotten involved, with civil rights investigators helping Mr. Smith piece together the case, which was hampered early on by missing evidence and holes in some initial police work.

Mr. Smith has said he intends to prosecute the case as a hate crime, which comes into play during the sentencing phase. If Mr. Dedmon is convicted of capital murder and the prosecutors can prove that the crime was committed because of the victim’s race, the sentence may be doubled. The prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty for Mr. Dedmon.

The victim’s family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, but has not spoken much publicly about Mr. Anderson’s death. In an interview with The New York Times last month, family members described Mr. Anderson as a good country cook, a gifted gardener and always genial. They said he liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant, which he had held for about seven years.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand-piano smile,” said his eldest sister, Barbara Anderson Young, who is one of the plaintiffs.

James Bradfield, Mr. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, is not a plaintiff. Under Mississippi law, same-sex partners have no claim in civil actions like this, Mr. Dees said.

There was no indication that Mr. Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.

Read More

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

Family of Black Man Sues Whites in Killing

notime4yourshit:

The lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven people who had piled into the two vehicles that night, charging that while some were directly responsible for assaulting and killing Mr. Anderson, others were negligent because they acted as lookouts and did not try to help Mr. Anderson.

One of the people yelled “white power” during the attack, and others used a racial slur and bragged about the killing, according to the investigators.

The district attorney for Hinds County, Robert Shuler Smith, has said he will try to implicate other teenagers when he takes the case to a grand jury, expected to happen this month.

The F.B.I. has also gotten involved, with civil rights investigators helping Mr. Smith piece together the case, which was hampered early on by missing evidence and holes in some initial police work.

Mr. Smith has said he intends to prosecute the case as a hate crime, which comes into play during the sentencing phase. If Mr. Dedmon is convicted of capital murder and the prosecutors can prove that the crime was committed because of the victim’s race, the sentence may be doubled. The prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty for Mr. Dedmon.

The victim’s family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, but has not spoken much publicly about Mr. Anderson’s death. In an interview with The New York Times last month, family members described Mr. Anderson as a good country cook, a gifted gardener and always genial. They said he liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant, which he had held for about seven years.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand-piano smile,” said his eldest sister, Barbara Anderson Young, who is one of the plaintiffs.

James Bradfield, Mr. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, is not a plaintiff. Under Mississippi law, same-sex partners have no claim in civil actions like this, Mr. Dees said.

There was no indication that Mr. Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.

Read More

(via strugglingtobeheard)

"We need to teach our youth our history does not begin with American slavery."

(via black-culture)

(via theoceanandthesky)

fuckyeahlesbianliterature:

July edition of Black Enterprise magazine.

(via fashionistazapatista)