who ya calling incoherent

I found this.

It is bizarre to find things you wrote linked to in various places. It is also super weird to find out that my post was the first introduction some people had to prison abolition.

Those folks over at xkcd seemed a tad confused by my post so far. It is a) crazy, and b) incoherent.

a) Come one… I even posted a link to the googlebook for madnss and civilization. I think people don’t read links.

b) I find sometimes people have trouble reading things that don’t march the reader from point a to point b to point c to point d and so on. That is mad boring. Language, writing is suppossed to be fun. I write logically for school more than enough. When I’m not writing for school I want to explore language. If that post has arguments they are made through inference. You won’t find me writing any logical proofs any time soon.

Hmmmm….. To be honest I found that article/post (the one in the link) to be a bit incoherent. I couldn’t quite make out whether it was trying to make a case against imprisonment, for animal abuse, or on something or other about race.

Come on, now. I feel like that reflects more on them than on me. Nobody is arguing for animal abuse, but then some white vegans have made that connection too. (Which to me says something about how a lot of vegans really feel about livestock). Me being upset about incarcerated folks doesn’t mean I think that what they did was fine and dandy, it just means I’m upset about incarcerated folks.

The quote above also reminds me of how people can’t seem to make statements that are multi-faceted and intersectional, because other folks can’t deal with those sorts of statements without trying to find out what the True Argument is.

attempting a watson fellowship

So I’ve realized that a Watson Fellowship isn’t something just anyone has a chance to win. So I’m thinking I might try and get one, deadline is mid-October and I’ll need a proposal and letters of recomendation.

So as of right now I have two thoughts on what I would want to do:

1. An Exploration of Subsaharan African Metropoles– because popular conceptions of Africa leave cities, especially big cities out.

(Bamako, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos)

or 2. Travel to different Anglo Settler Colonies and find out if there is a common thread to how the folks who lived there who weren’t white experience/d life in said colonies.

(Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa).

I need to give it more thought.

Trolls

I have a bad habit of BUI (blogging under the influence). I play around with trolls too much when I do that. I have a back and forth with an anonymous(2) muthafucker over at VoC tonight. I’m sort of having fun. Unfortunately Trolls can regenerate (D&D3.0). Fortunately they are weak to fire (D&D3.0). Gotta burn’em out.

Troll being speared by a good argument, i.e. a non-metaphorical spear.

Returning to the Blogosphere

I’ve been out of commission for awhile. I had to focus on my studies, but now I’m a senior and suddenly my school work corresponds more than ever with what I want to blog and write about. So today I shall mark a new goal of trying to blog on on of the blogs I write for at least five times a week. We’ll see how this turns out.

Fearless Vampire Killers

I’m getting soft.

Maybe.

I’m having more and more trouble with this trend I’m seeing where some other rad folks of color are dehumanizing some white people by calling them everything from devils, monsters, savages, to various types of animals. This discourse just makes me uncomfortable for several reasons:

1. Dehumanizing discourses obscure the fact that these are people doing horrible things. I don’t think it helps anyone to divide people, and ignore that these are human beings enacting horrible systems of oppression against other people.
2. Calling them pigs, dogs, etc furthers a system of speciecism, even if subtly.
3. Using the term savage for people that are enacting war, genocide, etc seems to me to be incorrect. They are engaging in civilized acts, as we all know civilizied people have been acting around the world for quite a while. “Savage” folk don’t bomb the shit out of Gaza, civilized people do.

The system’s a vampire. We are all human (at varying levels of fucked-upedness).

Imagine A Child’s World

I’ve spent an unusual portion of my time thinking about children lately. Thanks both to Josh’s post at his blog, and my post over at VOC. I realize now that my hopes for the direction of the discussion got sidetrakked by Josh’s comparison of dislikes of groups of people and their subject positions, and by the context that sparked these various discussions throughout the blogosphere. But really I wanted to have discussions about the idea of children’s oppression. I should have just said as such, because I’m afraid in me trying to nudge the conversation in that direction I may have silenced some people.

I really, really like children; I’m biased in that way. I didn’t always– I used to dislike children… a lot. I used to subscribe to the sort of overpopulation rhetoric that a lot of people do, but I’ve thrown that a way, and back (when I was still a child/teenager) I fell for those sort of masculinist visions of children as nothing but carriers of genes and otherwise drooling, whiny, snotbags. But I’ve grown up a bit I think. For me personally coming to like children is a sign of my growth. But this post is about my new views on children and oppression.

Whenever I conceptualized ageism I always thought of older folks, and how, especially in our individualistic, production-driven, late capitalist world we discard our elders as soon as they stop producing. But what about those who haven’t gotten to the point where they are considered productive?

I figure children face quite a few oppressions– a big one is they aren’t often allowed to be children. Children are shaped to be little adults, but still face a level of paternalism that other people find appalling when applied to themselves.

Children live in an interesting world. I remember being a child, and if I’m remembering correctly a child doesn’t really want all those rights that adults talk about. (You know the ones that the absence of, or denial of make oppression alarms go off). A child may not be denied the right to housing (doesn’t mean they get housing), or to medical care ( unless their parents deny them), but children are often denied their desires and interests.

A child wants to play, and a child wants to explore, and learn. They haven’t been in this world long, they want to know how it works. If you believe in rights isn’t that one. Think of all the things that keep children from navigating their new world: dangerous people (and equally or more likely imagined dangerous people, a world thats dying, a world their very bodies can become a commodity, a world where people don’t answer their questions as they try to learn this place, a world where they are forced to act in a way that isn’t their nature. Imagine a world where your instinct/desire/need is denied to you.

I can imagine a horizontal world where with everyone liberated from oppression (including children), where that tired phrase about villages raising children is taken to heart. Where we. adults, would have bonds with children and treat them like people, but not like little adults. Where we have compassion for each other.

So I didn’t explore the ageism as much as I had planned, but I’ve got time.

Exploring a White Planet (Part I):White Skin, Black Masks

Sometimes an Afronaut’s going to have to land in strange territory. Sometime’s exploring a different world can teach you more about your own. And sometimes it aids colonialism. Ahem. Anthropology. So for awhile I’m going to be exploring whiteness.

There’s a number of words for people I’ve had a tumultous relationship with, the obvious racial slurs come to mind, but one I’ve always been confused by is the word wigger. I never understood why the word, and the people represented bothered me– I just knew wiggers pissed me off.

And I haven’t thought about wiggers in a long time– nowadays I have to deal with yuppies and hipsters and hippies, but back home you couldn’t walk down the stret without bumping into a wigger at every corner. But I hated wiggers for a lot of reasons.

Well thanks to Ice Cube I’ve been thinking about whiteness (I undertook a personal project to force myself to study the show Black.White) more than usual. And while watching Black.White I realized that Bruno’s view of Black Folks is what I shall temporarily refer to as wigger-logic.

See wiggers try to be black, ignoring the fact that Black isn’t something you can become, and Blackness isn’t a monolithic performance. But what has always has pissed me off is they way this racist logic has been taken as a compliment. Why does a white kid want to be a wigger? And when people say someone is sayin g they are a wigger, its really saying they want to be a nigger. So why in their racial imagination is Black equated with sex, drugs, and (in essence) rock and roll, and why is this ignored? If Fox News said half the shit that a white kid in Tims and a jersey said we’d all be pissed.

(Ignore the sloppiness of this post– I’m tired and this is verbal vomit).

Why is the fact that wigger-logic is complimentary force us to ignore that its racist, essentializing, and offensive. I’m not sure about that right now.

Well now I’m not going to use the term wigger (or chigger, or any other related terms) like this ever again. I mean nowadays I hate the word because it works on the same racial logic as the term white trash.

A Normal Family

The NYT had a piece about literacy and internet speak today. Included was a typical family: if you’re a white upper class family from Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

At the same time the NYT ran a piece detailing how yet again “whites” are going to be the minority of this country by 2042. White fears, I’m tellin’ ya. The piece about 2042 also hinted at making “white Hispanics”, White. Seems a bit odd to me to even hint at it, we know (unless there is a radical paradigm shift) that who is considered White, will expand.

POC Spaces: Material and Virtual

I spent the weekend in an all POC space. It was fucking fabulous. I’m a huge proponent of POC spaces. This was a physical space where we all got to speak about our issues– no one said anything about how these were smaller issues, or that class comes first. It was fucking fantastic. A number of white dudes came in during the gathering, and someone would go up, and ask them to leave if they didn’t identify as a POC.

And here at Vassar we have the ALANA Center. Which is a space for stuents of color– though all are welcome. See I’ve learned you don’t know how much of a ask you put on for Whiteness, until you relax in a POC space (besides your family, because often there’s little mask wearing there).

Also this weekend I found that POC spaces are harder to maintain virtually. My post on Vegans of Color got invaded by some white dude with a god complex. This motherfucker chose the wrong weekend to invade. I just spent a weekend hanging out with Anti-authoritarian people of color– I’m taking shit in my spaces; I was empowered. This dude doesn’t come looking to debate– he comes looking to educate. I point out his privilege, though not coddling him, because I’m tired of softening what I say to make White folks feel more comfortable, an this dude gets upset that I pointed out his privilege: his tone gets more paternalistic, and now I’m mad– how dare he invade this space, and demand that I engage him on his terms. So I leave the discussion, and tell him I won’t engage in this particular discussion again with him. That ain’t good enough for him. He says he’d like to give me the job of educating him. THE NERVE of that motherfucker. Educate your own goddamn self. What the fuck?

And then I begin wondering if White folks think this blog is aimed at them, at educating them. Because I don’t write for White folks when I write at VoC– I write for folks of color, because I want it to be a space for people of color to speak.

Relationship With Religion

I had a dream about God today. See its the first time we’ve spoken in awhile. We had a falling out 12 years ago or so.

When I was a kid God just didn’t make sense to me. Why did I have to make a date once a week with a man who never payed attention to me. With a man who didn’t understand me. Who told me to shut up, things’ll get better  in the future (when I’m dead)– if I listen to everything he said. It was also at this point when I began a long affair with Science.

See I knew God was white, because Black folks sure didn’t worship no I AM before being shipped across the Atlantic. See I don’t trust a bunch of slave owners to introduce me to no one, and especially not my religion. I’ve learned to avoid abusive relationships, and God was a little two-timer. Every time I saw that blue-eyed, blond-haired, pasty-skinned Jesus, pentacle of perfection that he was, he’d slam my self esteem. All while on the side he was sleeping with White folks and making them feel all good about themselves.

So God and I broke up, and I started seeing Science. We weren’t exclusive though– Science could never satisfy me. So during my teenage years I flirted with Buddha a bit (but I kept orientalizing and fetishizing him so things ended), I brought home Satan once just to piss of God (and my Mother), and every now and then I’d try some kinky animistic stuff. Every now and then God would try and hide himself behind Stars and Crescents, but eventually that ego would shine through.

Then I got a little wiser about Science. See Science was a two-timer too. He couldn’t hide his colonial, abusive attitude any longer– so I dropped his White ass. If you’re seeing Science I suggest you look at his huge ego; everything’s gotta be his way, or else you’re delusional and irrational. Beside, he used to call me Negroid.

So I’ve been alone for while. It’s cool I don’t need anyone else to satisfy me. I can make my own decisions too. Besides when I need a little release, I got my Theory toys and then the thoughts just cum come.

But then God called. See I was dreaming, and she showed up. It wasn’t the same God I knew as a kid. Either he changed, or they share a name. This Godcomes shuffling up to me: big, nappy fro, dark brown skin, this God’s a Sister. And she opens her mouth and starts spouting all kinds of game about feminism, queerness, liberation, horizontalism. She was laying some radical shit on me.

It seems I wasn’t the only one growing up, and maturing. But I had to turn her down. I’m too young to be tying myself down, no matter how radical and heavy the shit she was laying down was. I like being single, and I don’t need anybody. Now I’m still afraid that it might be possible that one day I’ll get old, and want somebody to lean on so its a good thing God told me there’s always a space at her place for me to crash and get someone radical to chill with.