“If ‘All Lives Matter’ then why aren’t you mad too?”

Image shared by a friend on Facebook. If you know the source, let me know so I can add it.

anti-capitalistlesbianwitch:

Being an All Lives Matter activist must be exhausting.I mean, participating in protests against racism and police brutality; vigils; fighting for LGBT rights and gender equality; speaking out against xenophobia and Islamophobia; fighting against homelessness and poverty; working in their communities, etc…. They’re the real heroes.

On This Day In History

May 4th, 1886: The Haymarket Affair. A large labor rally in Chicago, Illinois by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions is disrupted by a protestor throwing a bomb at police following police brutality and murder the day before. It erupts into riots. By the end, 8 police died and 60 were injured. 4 protestors died, more than 70 were injured, and over 100 were arrested.

     There have been some horrible headlines this year. And this has sparked the BLM movement. They work hard to fight for racial equality, and there’s even been a case or two when a white person got hurt and they included them. There’s some really kind people on Tumblr.

     But then there’s ones who are unknowingly racist. While some understand that not all white people are the cause of this, many feel they are, and that just isn’t true. Now, I’m not trying to divert attention away from the hate crimes, I’m trying to express my sadness that we cannot come together as one during these sad times because of this hatred towards one another.

     MLK himself wanted white and black people to be at peace, despite everything white people (as a whole) had done to oppress them.

“ Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

     Humiliation is exactly what some of you are doing. Stereotypes and “white people jokes” are not only humiliating, but they can also be seen as racist.

Examples: “White people can’t cook chicken.”, saying somebody is white because their opinion is very disagreeable/as an insult, “White ppl be like…”

     I actually reblogged a post months back expressing how offended I was, but a person made my emotions feel invalid by saying something similar to “insults aren’t as bad as what they do to us” or something of that sort. Either way, I came to realize it’s still a horrible thing to do if it’s offending somebody. Black people are stereotypes as always eating fried chicken, Mexican people are stereotyped as eating tacos 24/7, Asian people are stereotyped as eating cats, but those are never really seen on Tumblr without somebody attacking the original poster.

     I’m biracial, my dad is white and my mom is black. My mom herself has taught me not all white people are bad, and at the same time she’s able to exercise her beliefs are racial inequality.

     I will now show you something from our house: 

     My white dad did not buy this for himself. He bought it for my mom.It wasn’t to be racist, it was because she wanted them. Why? She said it shows that even if we’re supposedly “over with slavery and segregation”, people are still allowed to sell these sorts of things. It’s there to show times haven’t changed as much as people would like to believe. My dad supports that, and there’s far more advertisements he’s bought for her, this is only a fraction. They loved each other, despite the history between their races. And both sides of the family get along with each other, too! My dad’s side is kind to my mom, and my mom’s side is kind to my dad.

     This post is NOT to make poc feel unimportant. This post is NOT saying white people are oppressed. What this post IS trying to say is that all races are equal, and that Tumblr is supposed to be a “safe place”, so everybody should feel welcome, even white people.

     Please reblog this, this is probably the most important post I’ll ever make. A lot of people have witnessed these hate crimes, and they’ve become bitter with hatred. I don’t want that for them, I want them to be able to love all people of all races, despite what a fraction of those people have done.

waterbottle98:

I don’t understand how the government is telling protesters to be peaceful and to go home. Being peaceful hasn’t seemed to work before so what’s different now?

Love the people who are whining about the protesters damaging property and being violent; apparently government land is more important that black lives and the time for peace has passed

I don’t understand how the government is telling protesters to be peaceful and to go home. Being peaceful hasn’t seemed to work before so what’s different now?

I want to know what people in other countries think of all of this protesting and police brutality

He had a right to breathe

Injustice in Greece we should no longer ignore! Spread the word!

Briefly, why race matters: 

1) The logic isn’t that race doesn’t matter, the logic is that individuals can be racist, and systems can be racist and all they require are complicit operators.

2) Unfortunately, the entirety of American history is a race issue. The concept of race in its modern form was born here. It began with the extermination and subjugation of the indigenous people (celebrated in Cowboy and Indian movies) and the violence against the African populations stolen in the Atlantic Slave Trade and plantation life.

Many slaves in the early colonies of the Caribbean were Irish or indigenous, as the demand for slaves grew so did the importation of African slaves. As the African slave population outnumbered the European, the idea of race, an exclusively Black slave population was born.  Resistance to this injustice catalyzed a reactionary intellectual movement that created the modern concept of racial difference in order to validate slavery. 

3) Policing did not begin with Civil Rights, slavery existed in the North, and racial discrimination was the law of much our country until 1964-65 when it was forcibly removed by the Federal Government. For example:

“In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.”

And so policing (especially on the local level) existed to maintain the status quo, that status quo was slavery, later that status quo became Jim Crow, and today that status quo is racist and class-based oppression.  

4) That being said, the systems that were in place don’t just go away. Nothing illustrates this point better than how quickly Angola Plantation became Angola Prison in Louisiana, to house Louisiana’s new “criminal” class of free-Black people shortly after emancipation. Criminalizing Blackness was of course a means to recapture a population and force them back into bondage and labor.

5) Think of the colonies throughout the world: are the colonized not themselves policing their own people in the interests of racist and exploitative regimes? In British India, the Imperial Police force was comprised largely of local Indians and Burmese, subordinate to European officers. Yet the colonial paradigm remained racist and exploitative.

In the contemporary American context, police officers can be of many ethnic or cultural backgrounds. The POC police officer need not be racist for their actions and the system to be racist, they need only be complicit with racist orders– and by being complicit they become part of the racist structure.

Twitter: @bodega_gyro_ao 

infectedwithnyanites:

bellybuttonblue2:

The police are going to charge her with negligent infanticide when it’s their fault for chasing her for stealing baby formula when she’s desperate to take care of her child but they’ll deflect responsibility and blame her their victim the store owner who put a price barrier between her and needed supplies to sustain a human life and their enforcer lapdogs both have blood on their hands but she’s going to suffer more for the cruelty inherent in their order and they’re going to deny they’re at fault

Was she even being chased?