#colonialism

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On the origins of magic: how the wands came to be. (4/?) From: Postcolonial resistance in the mythol

On the origins of magic: how the wands came to be. (4/?)

From: Postcolonial resistance in the mythologies of the magical peoples of the South Asian subcontinent ed. Sunil P. Patil (1991).

Old magic. Old magic old magic old magic.

How could people forget?

How could people forget the magic that had helped raise the great stones, that had marked the stars that pyramids pointed to, that had sunk ancient cities and raised rivers from deserts?

How could they forget?

All too easily, the answer rang back, all too easily. They had forgotten how to live, breathe and drink magic. Had forgotten how the men of yore had lived without wands; how without those twigs the magic was channeled through movement and sway and song and sacrifice. How without those twigs the only barrier to the magic you could make was yourself, was your own mind, your own sacrifice. How without those twigs you could do anything when you had enough strength.

Magic was a muscle, the elders said. Practice with it and it shall grow, just as by lifting rocks and timber each day your muscles shall grow. But take one of those sticks, those little twigs and you are using a lever to do that work for you, you are letting yourself be weak when you could be so so so strong.

The young ones ignored them, pointed at them laughed at these elders stuck in their old ways with dreams of a great and ancient past but naught to show for those dreams, and argued that now they were old how could they sway and sing and sacrifice? Was it not better to do less for more? To conserve, waiting for a greater task, The Great Task? Why offer themselves up mind, body and soul to magic when in a moment, with a mere flick of a wrist, with a wand they could do the same thing just as well? And these elders could lament wands all they liked, but they had nothing to show for all their boasts of glory, could not with such precision, with such finesse accomplish the things these children could.

The elders’ faces were impassive. 

The elders’ faces betrayed nothing.

So it went, for years and years, the children slowly outnumbering the elders, growing proud and mighty in their strength until the elders worried. Worried that in their pride the children would grow reckless, would forget that magic was no toy but a powerful force, one to be reckoned with - one that would demand its pay.

A great council they summoned, drawing magical folk from every corner of the uncivilized world and told them of their fears - of how they feared the children had forgotten the old magics of the world, had forgotten what it meant to channel power and force, what it meant to be responsible.

They fought. Father against son. Mother against daughter. 

And late that night elders from every corner of the uncivilized corners of the world met in an old forest, untouched by time and human hands, still throbbing with the ancient magic of the world, deep and dark. There they breathed their old and ancient magic for the very last time, letting it seep through their veins, rich and heady and intoxicating. Then with calls foreign to all, they rose and bound their children.

You want wands? they asked the magic they worshipped and worked with, You want levers and magic getting weaker?

Then so be it.

They bound the magic and their children all at once, forever cursing those who took in hand the twigs they called wands, weapons, to be doomed to a life torn away from the old magics of the world. So it was that when a child used a wand, working wandless came to be a burden, a path fraught with great difficulty that few except the most dedicated would ever tread.

It is their punishment. The consequence of their folly. 

When you see them, with their wands, remember the old magic, the magic that you breathe, drink and live. It is this magic in your veins, the magic of the civilized lands of the world. Dusty, old with time. Exercise it, children, use it, concentrate, feel it, let it flow through you, lest it be taken from you and lost forever.

I am disappointed, of course, that father never got to see this book. I think he would have quite enjoyed it. Would have found plenty of good use for it in his research. 

Naturally, as you might imagine, the book is popular only among a few select academic circles in the wizarding world. Wands as punishment? Sacrilege! Though I suppose one ought to be thankful it did not receive the Myths of Magical Europe treatment. A.R.

(Submitted by essayofthoughts, with a few minor edits on my part.)


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shafiq28:“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sabila.” “Areh jaan! You want her t

shafiq28:

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Sabila.”

Areh jaan! You want her to grow up without any idea about her background, her history, who she is?”

“Backgrounds and history - that’s for the past! You have to see the future. See what is best for her now.”

"What is so wrong about speaking to her in our language? Teaching her what we learnt? You think all those years at the Cadet College were a waste?”

“Even the Cadet College is no more, Sabila. It was all destroyed in the war - there’s nothing left!”

“The war for our culture and language! And we won!”

"With everything destroyed - all our infrastructure, our leaders, our intellectuals, dead and gone! Our kind, gone!”

"They cannot be all gone. I know it. I know our kind are still around. It’s not like all Bangladeshis were killed off in the war.”

"Our kind? Our kind either escapedor died! No two ways about it! And let me tell you - those that escaped? I know for sure that they don’t follow the old ways anymore.”

“‘Old ways’? OLD WAYS!? You think all those years of jadu that we learnt are “old ways”?! Cheech! Maybe maa was right…”

"Right about what?”

“Right about you thinking we are just stupid casi. No respect for our heritage. Maybe I should have listened to her.”

"Sabila! Don’t be ridiculous. I have a lot of respect for our heritage. I just don’t think that trying to teach it to Ayesha now would be useful for her. I mean - firstly, who is she going to speak Bangla to?”

“There are other Bangalis here too, you know. You moved here specifically because of them. And I’m sure there’s at least one jadukara in there.”

"Ya, they move here, with their big names and big jobs and big degrees, and what happens? They become cooks! or taxi drivers!”

"Is there something wrong with being a cook or a taxi driver?”

“NO! It’s just…they also learnt so much about their culture and what not, but look, the Bilatis, they do not care. I don’t want our Ayesha to suffer because the Bilatis don’t care.”

“Then why not just move back to Bidesh then?”

“Did you forget already? Everything is destroyed. What can we return to? We would suffer. Ayesha would suffer. You want Ayesha to suffer? I got us here for a good life, you know. Lucky for us she is born here, makes things so much easier I think.”

"So you want her to grow up like a Bilati? No concept of her culture at all, is it? Pagol na ki tui?”

"No no no! Sabila, shuno na? It’s not that I want her to not know where she comes from, at all. Na na. I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to learn Bangla right now.”

"Then how is she supposed to learn our literature, our stories, our songs? How is she supposed to be a good jadukara?”

"There are magical people here in Britain you know. With that one school…Hogwarts, I think? Some top people from there. It’s not like she will never know how to perform jadu.”

But she won’t know how to do it like us! How is she supposed to cast a good tantramantra if she can’t even speak Bangla properly? How is she supposed to make good potions if she doesn’t even know the names of the ingredients? How, Faizal, how?”

"She will learn Bilati magic! It’s not hard, look - Lumos - see, there is light.”

"Where did you get that wand from?”

“Oh, one of my friends took me to Diagon Alley the other day. Said all the Bilati magicians have wands. We should get one for Ayesha. Oh, and you too.”

“And why should I have to learn Bilati wand magic? We didn’t need this faltu wand business back in Bidesh!”

Things are different, Sabila. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, ha na?”

"Oh, so if the Romans all jump off a bridge I have to jump also? Chagol!

"If I am a chagol then you are a goru - so stubborn.”

"DON’T YOU DARE FAIZAL…”

“Hey hey, I am only kidding, areh. Sabila. Look. I’m not banning Bangla from the house. You want to tell her all our stories and literature and what not, you can. What I am saying is, for her sake, I think we should talk to her in English. And teach her English. Do everything in English.”

"And what happens if I put ek Bangla khota in my sentence? What, it will be all ulta palta hai hai ki hoisei?”

"One or two things, ok. But we have to be careful not to mix up so much. One of my cousins, he is a child psychologist, he says that sometimes the children get confused when they hear more than one language, so they keep quiet. They don’t know how to say anything! But if you pick one, then they learn easier.”

"Your cousin, ah? You Shafiqs, you think you know everything.”

"You wanted to be a Shafiq. Couldn’t stop talking about it even before we got married. Thought we had the good life.”

"I didn’t think having the good life means we have to forget ourselves!”

“We don’t have to forget ANYTHING! We can teach her Bangla later, when she’s older and can master one language. Then she won’t be so confused. But Sabila, look - even if she knows Bangla now, who is she going to practice with?”

“Us…”

“Yeah, and that’s it. You think the neighbours can talk to her in Bangla? Her school teachers? Her classmates? They will only make fun of her.”

"Oh, you think Bangla is funny?”

"No, I think the Bilatis are stupid. But I don’t want their stupidity to cause my children trouble. So we have to adapt.”

“Then what about the jadu?”

"Again, where is she supposed to cast tantramantra or find ayurveda ingredients? Where is she going to find the sahitya books we loved so much? For all we know, it’s probably banned here. One strange word and whoosh - off to Azkaban. The Bilati Ministry did ban flying carpets after all.”

"Faizal, I don’t think the Bilatis will send a child to Azkaban.”

"Oh you don’t know. I’ve heard them punishing children very strictly for doing magic in front of Muggles. Just small things, but oh - Statute of Secrecy!”

“Listen to you! You sound like a Bilati already. ‘Muggle’, what a lousy word. As if they are like a pig or something.”

“That’s how the Bilatis see jadunaireally.”

"WHAT? Are the Bilatis really that backwards? Are you sure you want to raise Ayesha in this place?”

"It’s better than our other option, Sabila. At least here she still gets a chance to learn some jadu, even if it’s different than ours. Maybe she can be a magical scientist and put our jadu and their magic together. I don’t know. But back in Bidesh? She will be nothingWorse than here.”

"I’m still not sure about this.”

“I know you’re scared, Sabila. You loved sahitya so much. I do too. That is why I loved you! Your passion for the language, so evident in your eyes! But it will have to wait, jaan…just wait a few years. Just wait till she is old enough to be able to appreciate it. You try to tell her now, she will forget.”

"And you’re sure talking to her in English only and giving her only English books is okay.”

“It will prepare her for a bright future. We don’t want her to suffer because she doesn’t know the language. People are already going to criticise her because she is not White like the Bilatis. Even though she is born and raised here. The less hurdles she has to jump through, the better.”

“So we have to hide ourselves because the Bilatis are close-minded?”

“I know, I hate it too. But that is how the world works. Not everyone can fight fight fight. That is why we did not go to the war. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves first.”

“Spoken like a true Bilati.”

“I’m just saying the facts.”

“sigh…”

“Sabila, I promise you, if she wants to learn Bangla, once she’s ready, you can teach her. You don’t have to hide anything. You can tell her about the old days if you want. All I’m asking is, just do it in English. Until she’s old enough. OK?”

"…ok, jaan. I hope you’re right.”

[[source:Rajiv Ashrafi
OOPS WRONG BLOG LET ME TRY THIS INSTEAD
written to commemorate International Mother Language Day, which in turn commemorates the Bengali Language Movement. It’s a pretty huge deal in Bangladesh. thanks to serkestic for the reminder!
a lot of this is based on a true story: I was primarily raised in English because my family figured I would not have any avenues to practice Bangla while being raised in Malaysia. English is my first and primary language. I speak rather broken Bengali and can’t read the language. This project is as much about me trying to reclaim what I’ve lost as it is me having fun with fandom.]]


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aeternalegacy:surprisebitch:surprisebitch:I did not write this, but I second it !!!!Non-Filipinos ca

aeternalegacy:

surprisebitch:

surprisebitch:

I did not write this, but I second it

image

!!!!

Non-Filipinos can reblog this btw

Yep.

If you’ve ever spoken to a Tagalog speaker, they may have trouble with pronouns in English. My parents came over as professionals that are fluent in English. They speak English 70% of the time. They’ve lived in the US for nearly 50 years and they still fuck up pronouns.

This is because there is no “he” or “she”. There’s just siya which encompasses both (all) genders.


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ghuncha:Today is the anniversary of the Qissa Khwaani Bazaar massacre. On April 23, 1930, British

ghuncha:

Today is the anniversary of the Qissa Khwaani Bazaar massacre. On April 23, 1930, British troops opened fire on hundreds of non-violent Pashtun protestors at Qissa Khwaani Bazaar in Peshawar, British India (now in Pakistan). Between 200 and 400 people were killed.

The protestors belonged to the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, who fought for social reforms and Pashtun self-determination through non-violent means. Activists and workers from the movement had experienced massacres earlier – in Takkar and Hathikhel. Their last massacre took place in 1948 in Babbra, where around 600 people were fired upon and killed by the newly-formed Pakistani government.

The atrocities of the British empire and the early Pakistani government have long been forgotten by most. Still, every year, elders and students in northwestern Pakistan gather to honor the sacrifices of the Khudai Khidmatgar activists. As the saying goes: never forgive and never forget.


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brechtianqueer:

brechtianqueer:

you can tell i love these idiots because i, a whole desi, am drawing a fictional member of the british royal army completely by choice

“THE WHITE MAN’S WORLD.” By Daniel Carter “Uncle Dan” Beard, from Mark Twain’s travelogu

“THE WHITE MAN’S WORLD.” By Daniel Carter “Uncle Dan” Beard, from Mark Twain’s travelogue Following the Equator (1867)


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repost-this-image:

frustratedasatruar:

mystery-ink:

xicamatl:

xicamatl:

People on this website will reblog positivity posts about Indigenous peoples and our religions and supporting our spirituality

until they find out that some of us practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice and then suddenly no one can read and everyone has places to be

I’m speaking from the perspective of an indigenous Nahua who was born and raised in southern México. I’m very familiar with the cannibalism and sacrifice practiced by my people, and know that countless other Indigenous peoples have practiced both

Colonizers boil down the incredible achievements and scientific discoveries of Mesoamerica into ~human sacrifice~ and then have the gall to lecture me about the morality of human sacrifice???

Dismissing an entire civilizations achievements because their religion included sacrifice is absolutely peak colonial mindset. You are projecting your modern western colonial morality on something you cannot, possibly comprehend and think you are being helpful and respectful and you are not

I could write a book on my ancestor’s culture of sacrifice. Please understand that the way you likely learned it in school was racist and colonialist and taught from the perspective of white people. Please understand that trying to argue about it with indigenous people or using it as a gotcha to “prove that we’re bad actually” is incredibly disrespectful and ignorant.

And while we don’t practice human sacrifice or cannibalism anymore, the history of it is incredibly sacred and important to us. I will absolutely defend my ancestor’s practice of cannibalism to the death from non native people

instead of being racist about it, maybe you can try picking up a history book written by an Indigenous person for once in your life

If you can’t respect the ~scary~ indigenous cultures, then you have 0 respect for Indigenous peoples at all

also, big take here — but ancient European cultures also practiced sacrifice (to varying extents and historical sources are scarce but yeah. somewhere these colonisers’ ancestors are laughing)

I mean, even forgetthat kind of stuff- like yes, myforbears for example had a habit of hanging people from trees as tribute to Tyr and The Gallows God, and the fabled Blood Eagle was done in tribute to the Allfather, but even if you forgetall of thatstuff, europe’s history of Human Sacrifice gets superrecent.

Like, by what definition of Human Sacrifice does drowning a woman in a lake for being a witch because Jesus said to, notqualify as an act of Human Sacrifice for The White Christ? What about torturing people to death when they won’t convert, and/or torturing them until they doconvert and thenkilling them to stop them from going back? How’s thatnot Human Sacrifice? What about when crusaders would roll up into a Jewish village and murder every man, woman, and child they could lay hands on, all to appease their deity? Why wouldn’t thatcount?

Those are rhetorical questions obviously: the answer to “which definition allows for this” is “the one where it doesn’t count when white christians do it,” of course.

Don’t forget European cannibalism! The eating of actual Egyptian mummies as medicine continued into the 17th century. Europeans were eating powdered POC remains at the exact same time they were demonizing Indigenous people for “cannibalism.”

The very word “cannibal” comes from the Caribal people, who were falsely accused of just randomly eating folks for funsies (which is literally never true of ANY culture that has practiced ritual cannibalism).

The Aztecs were demonized for making sacrifices that they genuinely believed would keep the sun god from destroying the earth (again)—and IIRC quite a few of those sacrificed had volunteered to do it, in stark contrast to the people who died as the result of the Inquisition, pogroms, witch hunts, and the like, all of whom were innocent civilians killed in the name of Christianity—and a lot of those murders were happening at the same time that conquistadores were destroying Mesoamerican cultures under the pretense that they were “uncivilized” and “barbaric” for—killing people in the name of their gods.

The hypocrisy of colonizers is staggering.

Demonic possession movies and movies that use rituals, traditions, believes or “lore” of a different culture without their perspective about it, they’re still perpetuating the colonialism ideals of that everything that’s different is “evil” or “demoniac”.

thecringeandwincefactory:

idionymon:

thinking about how the burning of the library of alexandria is remembered as the most prominent historical symbol of the destruction of knowledge…but that’s nothing compared to the thousands of entire languages killed in America and Australia by the colonialists…

To put an extremely fine point on this excellent paragraph: language is knowledge in non-literate cultures. This is why language reclamation is always at the top of the list for where to spend our limited resources in Native America.

abolitionjournal:Teju Cole situates Trump’s Islamophobia in a longer history “in which a far wider

abolitionjournal:

Teju Cole situates Trump’s Islamophobia in a longer history “in which a far wider swath of the country than Trump’s base is implicated”


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Anti-communism is undeniably rooted in racism and colonialism. For what other reason would a reactio

Anti-communism is undeniably rooted in racism and colonialism. For what other reason would a reactionary oppose the liberation of the colonized proletariat and the natural progression of humanity? What funny logic do these bigoted white folks use to justify the forced captivity and migration of the African people to America, only to somehow act against the invisible hand of social progression of racial integration? A 21st century example of this photo are all the white republicans opposing the Asian and Chinese community in the United States as suspected agents of the Communist Party of China while happily accepting investments, commerce, and other economic benefits. At its core, the white anglo-saxon protestant is rotten, and must be reeducated in the upcoming proletarian revolution to build a successful multicultural society, similar to the USSR. Even the most exotic looking ethnic Mongolian was able to be treated as an equal to a Russian native in the glorious socialist republic.It is safe to say that the current ethnic relations in China are more progressive than the one of the stagnating American empire.

In the same exact year, fidel castro stated (as he always has throughout the entirety of his life and career) racism to be one of central and most important issues the new revolutionary government would tackle. even whilst he was in the partido ortodoxo (his political ideas were still pretty raw at that point), one of the key believes he held and campaigned for was racial equality.

“Castro’s government promised to get rid of racism in three years, despite Cuba’s violent history of colonialism. Though Cuba never had formal, state sanctioned segregation, privatization disenfranchised Cubans of color specifically.[12] Previously white only private pools, beaches, and schools were made public, free, and opened up to Cubans of all races and classes. Because much of the Afro-Cuban population on the island was impoverished before the revolution, they benefited widely from the policies for affordable housing, the literacy program, universal free education in general, and healthcare.[14] But above all, Castro insisted that the greatest obstacle for Cubans of color was access to employment. By the mid 1980s racial inequality on paper was virtually nonexistent. Cubans of color graduated at the same (or higher) rate as white Cubans. The races had an equal life expectancy and were equally represented in the professional arena.[12][15] Cuba, by 1980, had equal life expectancy rates of Black and white people, a stark contrast from the United States and Brazil who had large inequalities in terms of life expectancies. “


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This 1970s Black Panther news paper shows Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong, honored for thei

This 1970s Black Panther news paper shows Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong, honored for their work against imperialism and showing respect towards african americans. When the liberal white Americans were indifferent to the oppression of the african americans, the comrades in Asia were willing to fund the black panther party to liberate the colonized proletariat.


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January 1, 2018 marked the 214th observation of Haitian Independence Day, which celebrates the culmi

January 1, 2018 marked the 214th observation of Haitian Independence Day, which celebrates the culmination of a 12 year struggle by self-liberated former slaves against French colonial rule in the country then known as Saint-Domingue. The Haitian Revolution was the only slave uprising that led to the creation of a state, and challenged long-held perceptions about race and slavery across the Americas.

Within our collection is Lettre des Commissaires des citoyens de couleur en France à leurs frères et commettans dans les îsles françoises, a pamphlet written by the Citoyens de Couleur en France (Citizens of Color in France) on June 10, 1791, just before the storm of revolution broke. The pamphlet, addressed to both the white and black citizens of Saint-Domingue, celebrates the French National Assembly’s decree of May 15, 1791, which extended political rights to persons of color born of free parents, and outlines the proper response to the decree. The pamphlet encourages working hard, trusting the law to take care of injustice, and treating slaves more fairly. Despite the hopes of the writers, tensions in Saint-Domingue worsened, with increased conflicts between white colonists and free black citizens, and eventually erupting in the massive slave revolt of August 21, 1791.


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“Much like the US and the western European nations, the standards of living in the Nordic countries are based not on having invented a wonderful system that can provide for everyone’s needs, but based on the exploitation of resources and labor of the global south. Lenin described one of the key tendencies of imperialism as ‘the exploitation of oppressed nations—which is inseparably connected with annexations—and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of 'Great’ Powers, increasingly transforms the 'civilised’ world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations.’ While the large colonial empires of Lenin’s time have largely dispersed, the relationships have not so much disappeared as they have changed form. The global south is exploited, and the western powers profit.”

mapsburgh:

mapsburgh:

Re-reading The Two Towers, I came upon this passage from the battle of Helm’s Deep:

“‘Yet there are many that cry in the Dunland tongue,’ said Gamling. ‘I know that tongue. It is an ancient speech of men, and once was spoken in many western valleys of the Mark. Hark! They hate us, and are glad; for our doom seems certain to them. “The king, the king,” they cry. “We will take their king. Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to the robbers of the North!” Such names they have for us. Not in half a thousand years have they forgotten their grievance that the Lords of Gondor gave the Mark to Eorl the Young and made alliance with him. That old hatred Saruman has inflamed.”

So basically, we have an indigenous people, whose land was claimed by conquerors from across the sea. When said conquerors couldn’t maintain control of the land anymore, rather than granting independence to the native people, the conquerors handed it off to a different set of foreign colonizers, who have refused to recognize the indigenous people’s rights for hundreds of years. No wonder the Dunlendings are upset! This is a war of liberation for them! Tragically, at the end of the battle, the Dunlending POWs are forced to labor at repairing Helm’s Deep as penance for their rebellion.

This all supports my headcanon that Saruman was the good guy in this portion of the war.

Turns out Tolkien more or less agreed with me. From the essay “Of Dwarves and Men,” in HoME XII:

Also it must be said that ‘unfriendliness’ to Numenoreans and their allies was not always due to the Shadow, but in later days to the actions of the Numenoreans themselves. Thus many of the forest-dwellers of the shorelands south of the Ered Luin, especially in Minhiriath, were as later historians recognized the kin of the Folk of Haleth; but they became bitter enemies of the Numenoreans, because of their ruthless treatment and their devastation of the forests, and this hatred remained unappeased in their descendants, causing them to join with any enemies of Numenor. In the Third Age their survivors were the people known in Rohan as the Dunlendings.

thisismisogynoir:

hamilkilo:

I really don’t understand how some people hate Hamilton. Here’s some reasons why I love it:

• it was written by a man of color, Lin Manuel Miranda, to modernize and retell the story of the founding of the US and the overall impact an immigrant faced in an up and coming nation

• the roles were specifically written for people of color to play the characters because of the white washing in the media, but specifically Broadway (there was an entire scandal surrounding this casting choice in 2016)

• it emphasized the roles that immigrants played in the founding of the country but also in the modern day America

• not to mention that Lin Manuel Miranda speaks out about a variety of issues in America and he even went as far as to open Hamilton in Puerto Rico to raise money to rebuild their country after the hurricanes

• The musical gives a voice to people of color and gives them a place in a retelling of history that they were largely not included in, especially in our text books and classrooms

• it empowers women throughout the musical, showing different dynamics and types of powerful women (Angelica compared to Eliza)

• it expresses the duality of each character and while Aaron Burr is the anti-hero, he isn’t a villain. It shows motivation and angle behind each character’s action

• it shows us people of color in powerful positions! It gives THREE presidents of color and the only white person in the musical was King George III

• Hamilton is a relateable character. Specifically his line from Hurricane, “When my prayers to God we’re met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance!” That’s so powerful!!!

• Lin chose the hip hop/R&B style music because he thought it was the sound of America and it represented the country.


These are just a handful from the top of my head. I like Hamilton because I find Alexander Hamilton to be an inspiring, relatable, flawed, and outspoken character. His ability to take a stand and constantly voice his opinions are what I aspire to do as well. He was outspoken and bold in the middle of a revolution, and he went after what he wanted. Despite his flaws and mistakes, he is still one of my favorite fictional (the musical portrayal is fictional imho) characters that still inspires me to this day. I could write an entire essay about the musical, but I’ll spare you.

During these difficult times, I hope you can be like Hamilton: strong in the face of adversity and unafraid to punch the assholes that get in your way. Support those around you and stand with our Black friends. Black Lives Matter!

Blah blah blah and here’s why we hate it: 

* It glorifies the founding fathers, European colonizers, and slave owners. 

* It’s written by a non-Black man with no connection to slavery and who has no right to make commentary on it in any way. 

* It’s true that it might cast non-white people in the main cast…as slave owners and colonizers. 

* “Sally, be a lamb darling, won’t you open it?” *vomiting intensifies* 

* Miss me with the idea that Hamilton is fucking feminist lmao. There are four women, I repeat, FOUR WOMEN, in the play, only 14 of the 46 songs are sung by women. All of them play a peripheral love interest role to Hamilton, even Angelica, who in real life was already happily married by the time she met Hamilton, and in the musical is supposed to be his intellectual equal, and yet all she gets to do is sing and rap about…her feelings for him and the love triangle between them and her sister. The only exception to this role is Peggy, who…umm, disappears. It doesn’t pass the bare minimum of the Bechdel test. The women of the play are not powerful feminists, they are pawns designed to further Alexander’s journey and exist in relation to him. Them snapping their fingers and saying they’ll include women in the sequel is just a “you go girl!” moment, it’s all for show. We as a society are just so used to the “bare minimum of women is enough or even majority women, just make them give sassy quips and act ‘BADASS’ and boom, you’ve got a feminist narrative!” that we accept stories like these even outside of the colonist propaganda aspect of it all as feminist. Despite there being actual feminist musicals that put women at their center out there that are much, MUCH better and less problematic than Hamilton. Mean Girls? Heathers? SIX? The Color Purple? Hello? But no just focus on the musical with like four women whose only feminist moment is asking to be a part of the narrative. 

* Say No to This 

* It doesn’t give POC a voice so much as it has them play the role of historically white founding fathers and colonizers who were involved with the slave trade. 

* Alexander is not a relatable hero. He’s a racist colonist who married into a family of slaveowners. 

Is that enough for you? 

Although: 

During these difficult times, I hope you can be like Hamilton: strong in the face of adversity and unafraid to punch the assholes that get in your way. Support those around you and stand with our Black friends. Black Lives Matter! 

Good God. Some people are unable to be reasoned with. 

Hey! So I made this post years ago, and I totally forgot about it and this blog for a while, but I definitely agree with what this person is saying and I think it’s important to read!


I am sorry. I was wrong. My original post is tone deaf, flawed, and wrong on several accounts. Thank you to @thisismisogynoir for their contribution and corrections.


I thought about deleting this post when it came back up, but this person shares a lot of important information that we should know as we consume or engage with this media.


I hope you take the time out of your day to read this, listen to Black voices on this matter, and do your research.


I will do better in the future. Thank you for correcting me and holding me accountable.

I saw Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019) at a local cheap theater with one of my friends last night and, to quote my friend, it was “wild”. Overall Dora is a fun movie that offers very important and positive Latine representation, and most of the minor things that bothered me (lack of narrative cohesion, the unrealistic absence of the sheeramount of paper involved in actualarchaeology) certainly wouldn’t bother the core demographic (children). However, Peter Debruge, writing for Variety, commented:

““Dora and the Lost City of Gold” goes out of its way to establish that the character isn’t a tomb raider or a treasure hunter, but rather an explorer, risking her life for the love of knowledge. That ranks her as perhaps the most “woke” big-screen adventurer since the invention of cinema, making Indy’s indignant “That belongs in a museum!” seem so 20th century by comparison” (“Film Review: ‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’”).

This is where, I think, we get into some trouble. Spoilers below.

There are, on the surface, some obvious differences between a “treasure hunter” and an “explorer.” Treasure hunting is destructive and extractive, taking artifacts based on how high their potential resale value might be, with a complete disregard for the surrounding artifacts/environment, let alone the cultural meaning of the either artifact being extracted or the things being destroyed to retrieve it. An explorer, we are told, doesn’t take the gold. 

“Exploration” and “explorer,” however, are highly loaded terms. Exploration is intrinsically linked to colonialism and imperialism, and explorers have historically been central to the production of knowledge and the generation of public and private interest which paved the way for colonization. They have also, historically, taken the gold. This is highly evident in the way that Cambridge Dictionary defines “explorer” as “a person who travels to places where no one has ever been to learn about them” because if explorers go where no one has ever been and explorers go to places where people of color have lived and are actively living, we now know who counts as a person and who doesn’t. To be fair, this specific phrasing is not a universal definition, but other definitions still contain the same problematics. Google Dictionary, for example, defines “explorer” as “a person who explores an unfamiliar area; an adventurer”. Here we can maybe concede that the “unfamiliar area” is unfamiliar to the person exploring it not an area that “no one” is familiar with, but again when we consider how the term is applied, explorers implies an emptiness to the region being explored: someone on vacation might “explore” the city of New York, but they wouldn’t be considered an explorer for doing so. 

This leads us into the problematic of “jungle puzzles.” The phrase is first used in the movie by Randy, the cliche socially awkward nerd, after they have fallen into an aquifer. Dora and Randy both notice that the star map on the roof is wrong, prompting Randy to say it must be a jungle puzzle and pull a lever at random in order to correct the star alignment and reveal something hidden. Dora says there is no such thing as jungle puzzles, the room begins to fill with water, and they realize the star map was in fact accurate the whole time and they had just been looking at it wrong. This scene offers an excellent subversion of the “jungle puzzle” trope which is so often utilized in jungle-action/explorer flicks. In the images and rhetoric of colonialism, we frequently see the “challenge as invitation” theme appear, and often in ways which are very violently sexualized. This model is not only applied to colonial imaginings of colonized women/women of color, but to the feminized land itself, and it is very much as rape-y as this implies. The entire jungle puzzle trope is centered around the idea that ancient and/or indigenous peoples built their cities and their civilizations in order to serve as “escape the room” tests of courage, morality, and knowledge for outsiders, rather than for actual use by the inhabitants of those cities/members of those civilizations. It carries over the idea that the challenge of solving the puzzle invites in explorers/colonizers, and often it further imagines a universal morality and understanding of value which the explorer/colonizer can access and succeed at. Because of this, having a scene where explorers believe that an element of indigenous civilization was designed for outsiders to “solve” in order to be “rewarded” only to realize that they not only misunderstood the accuracy of an Incan star map, but that the entire structure was just a regular part of Incan life that had nothing to do with outsiders is an important intervention.

Unfortunately, upon arrival at the city of Parapata this initial intervention is lost, as the children quickly realize there are in fact “jungle puzzles” both to enter the city and to view the giant golden monkey statue. I do want to emphasize here that between Indiana JonesandDora and the Lost City of Gold, it is obviously important and even radical to see the rugged individual (cishet white man) model of Indiana Jones replaced by four kids–two of whom are Latinx and one of whom is played by an Australian Aboriginal woman–working together, and this shift is apparent in the way they characters interact with the city and its guardians. However, because it uses the same tropes it has many of the same issues. Again, it imagines that the city was built as a test, but the problematics of this representation are heightened by the arrival of los guardidos perdidos/the lost guardians and the old woman who initially tried to keep both the treasure hunters and the explorers away from Parapata but in the scene leading up to Dora solving the final puzzle, transforms into a beautiful young Incan princess and allows Dora to attempt the puzzle. 

First, as a separate but connected issue, the figure of the Incan princess also plays into the idea of indigenous peoples as mystical/mysterious, ancient, and displaced from/frozen in time. First of all, I again want us to think about definition and application; according to Google Dictionary “ancient” means “belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence.” The Incan Empire fell in the 1530s under Spanish conquest and the Incan people still exist today; when we look at Europe, Stonehenge is ancient; you don’t ever hear about the “ancient” art of Leonardo di Vinci, and he was dead and buried for more than a decade before the Incan Empire was destroyed. While we are not told where the guardians or the princess comes from, what we are implicitly told by an de-aging of the Incan princess is that they seem to be connected to the “ancient” empty city rather than contemporary Incan society, and subsequently that there are no modern Incan peoples, or that the modern Inca are irrelevant to this story. Against this lack of contemporary Incan indigeneity, Dora refers to the student body of a Los Angeles high school as its “indigenous population” several times throughout the film; it is imperative to consider how this undermines modern indigenious communities and their experiences. 

Furthermore, the figure of the old-young princess fully leans into the sexually exploitative imagingings of colonized peoples/cities/lands as desiring of the entrance of outsiders; as an old woman, the princess’s role is to warn away, but as the young woman her role is to invite in the worthy, with the worthy being those who are able to solve the puzzle. Dora says she wants to learn, and the princess allows her to attempt the puzzle, but what exactly is Dora supposed to be learning (it seems the reward for the puzzle is the ability to view a giant gold statue of a monkey) and, more importantly, why is the entire city centered around this test? 

Pavillion des Tabacs. 1931. P. Bosse.78 3/8 x 57 ¼ in./199 x 145.4 cmAn electric-pink neon gl

Pavillion des Tabacs. 1931. P. Bosse.

78 3/8 x 57 ¼ in./199 x 145.4 cm

An electric-pink neon glow surrounds a stylized bust of a smoking African woman in a convergence of modern and traditional aesthetics. The Exposition Coloniale of Paris, held in 1931, attempted to paint France’s colonial empire in a positive light by demonstrating mutually beneficial cultural exchange. The expo attracted between 7 and 9 million visitors from around the world.

Available at auction June 26. Learn More>>


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linguist-breakaribecca:

“Language isn’t neutral or objective. It is a vessel of cultural stories, values, and norms. And in the United States, everyday language plays into the violent, foundational myth of this country’s origin story—Europeans ‘discovering’ a virtually uninhabited wilderness and befriending the few primitive peoples who lived there—as well as other cultural myths and lies about Indigenous Peoples that are baked into U.S. culture and everyday life.


Cleve Davis (Shoshone-Bannock) points out that everyday language continues discrimination that is an extension of the centuries-long federal policy of genocide, assimilation, and oppression toward the original peoples of North America.

It might seem harmless when your boss mentions the need for a powwow among the company’s executives or an online quiz promises to reveal your spirit animal, but everyday language like this is a result of centuries of violence and continues to perpetuate stereotypes that have real-life impacts on Native communities.”

ForIndigenous Peoples’ Day, 2021

 오늘은 우리나라의 광복절입니다 (그리고 인도의 독립기념일이기도 합니다!). 1945년 8월 15일 - 평소에는 우리나라에게 이런 역사가 있다는것을 모를정도로 반복적이고 안정적인

오늘은 우리나라의 광복절입니다 (그리고 인도의 독립기념일이기도 합니다!). 1945년 8월 15일 - 평소에는 우리나라에게 이런 역사가 있다는것을 모를정도로 반복적이고 안정적인 삶을 살지만 사실 잘 생각해보면 1945년도 직전까지도 제 할머니 할아버지들의 부모님께서 청춘을 바쳐 살아온 세상이며 직시해야하는 현실였고, 제 할머니 할아버지들은 대한민국이 일본제국에서부터 해방되는것을 직접적으로 느끼며 자라왔을겁니다. 지금의 자유와 권리를 자연스럽게 누릴수 있게 된것은 개개인의 시민들과 수많은 독립운동가들의 노고가 있었기에 가능하다고 생각해요.

Today is a special day for not just one but two countries that are close to my heart - 8.15.1945 National Liberation Day of Korea , 8.15.1947 Independence Day of India If you think really hard about it, 1945 isn’t a long time ago - my great grandparents lived through Japanese colonialism and the war and my grandparents lived through the aftermath of the war and the Korean independence. The fast advanced Korea, the comfort of daily life, and the rights I have as a citizen in this country is a direct result of all the individual citizens’ and Independence Activists’ efforts of enduring, withstanding, and fighting for their rights.

그림은 작업중 그림을 편집했습니다 / art is edited from my wip!


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