(via faabulous-agender)
It might seem simple and easy enough to you, but it took me 26 years to find something that described me..that actually fit me, and made me realize that I wasn’t fucking alone. When you can find others who can say “I understand..me too…” that is a big fucking deal. Yes there are difficulties in having labels, but FUCK it is a BEAUTIFUL THING to know that you are not alone.
(via anthrosquirrel)
“The 50th Anniversary Special is about looking to the future of Doctor Who, not dwelling on the past”
(via anthrosquirrel)
ME.
The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.
Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”
Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.
It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.
Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”
The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.
Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.
(via pocproblems)
Had you any idea that Emmett Till’s final words were some of boldest in American history?
Milam: “You still as good as I am?”
Till: “Yeah.”
Milam: “You still ‘had’ white women?”
Till: “Yeah.”
Keep in mind that that’s after two grown men had tortured him for hours. Milam would later say that, following that exchange, he had no choice but to kill the 14-year-old boy:
“Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a n*gger in my life. I like n*ggers—in their place—I know how to work ‘em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, n*ggers are gonna stay in their place. N*ggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a n*gger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’. I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that n*gger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ‘em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’”
still less than 60 years ago white folks.
Just 57 years ago. Think long and hard about that. 57 years. That’s not that long.
That’s how privilege sounds.
“I like them, but in their place. I like them, but they’re not as good as me. I like them, but I’ll kill/assault/make life hell for them because I feel it is my right to do so.”
He calls it “poison” - being denied his ubiquitous privilege for even a moment - was venomous to his psyche.
No way in hell that fucked up mentality just evaporated from his generation - we all know, it was instilled far further back - yet that’s the beginning of every “we’re not like that” excuse: that somehow THIS time period was one of great justice and change.
(via pocproblems)
the animator probably requested that this be put in the script because they were so excited that the boulder came out as great as it did so he wanted a little reward for himself… at least, that’s what I would have done…
Maybe they had a ton of trouble rendering the boulder properly and so when it was done they were like ‘You know what? This @#!*% deserves a line in the script.’
As the daughter of a renderer, I can confirm this is pretty likely. :P
You know what? That is a nice boulder
(via sonofoptimus)
Things I need to work on:
so in Japanese, we sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
here’s a general gist of the translation:
Rudolph had a shiny nose
no one liked him
he cried every night
then one Christmas it was dark
Santa decided Rudolph’s nose was convenient (literally it says convenient)
Rudolph was useful.I SHIT YOU NOT.
(via remindmelaterk)
