Thursday, December 29, 2016

2016 Isn't a Dumpster Fire, & Thoughts on Mourn-Shaming

I am guilty of being on the “2016 Sucks” bandwagon. All the celebrity deaths, all of the personal friend deaths, all of the hope for progress in American democracy deaths just seemed to add up to a terrible year. I finally got off the bandwagon this morning to try to give everyone a little bit of hope. Regarding the election, I have already talked about how it’s not the “worst thing to happen to America”, but let’s not forget what the future holds. Personally, I suffered a few losses of acquaintances and friends, but I remember 2013 and 2014. Finally, there were a LOT of celebrity deaths, but no more than usual. STILL, anyone admonishing people for mourning is a goddamn asshole and needs to sit the fuck down.

Though there was an uptick in frequency of experiencing something racist after the election, and though my most recent racist experience was over the damn top, we don’t know what the future holds. Something ridiculously racist would happen to me once a month. This does not mean the casual racism of microaggressions that people of color have to navigate and deicde wisely whether they are worth addressing or just move on. I’m talking chinstrap beard in the passenger side of a confederate flag-laden 4x4 screaming “riding (flying?) monkey” at me while I’m biking down the street. I’m talking someone saying “CSS isn’t a programming language you dumb nigger” on Instagram under a picture of me in a nerdy shirt. (NOTE: at no time did I ever claim that CSS was a programming language. Who’s dumb NOW?) Since the election, it’s been twice a month. Policy wise, we just don’t know what is going to happen. We can shit on 2016 all we want, but 20th January 2017 is when we really need to be vigilant. That is the day that we need to hope that the detractors detract the fuck out of him. That is the day that Congresshumans who are not for this election had better do their best to keep all of the unconstitutional promises he made nothing but broken dreams of the alt-right…my bad…I meant white supremacist shit bags. Socially/politically, we can talk about how terrible 2016 was, but we shouldn’t blindly look to 2017 to be much better. We have a lot of work to do.

Specifically for me, 3 people I know passed away this year. I wasn’t really close with all of them, but they meant something to a lot of other people I know, so I felt their loss. 2016 sucked for them for that reason. I respect that. On a personal level, 2016 was nowhere near as bad as 2013, when I nearly watched one of my best friends pass away in front of me. Cancer is a motherfucker. Six months later, as I was starting to get functional, another friend of mine died suddenly. The following year, three friends from three different circles died, within 24 hours. That was a hard year. I did not feel that type of loss this year. Not even when my favorite artists died. Not even after Election Day. My 2013 and 2014 are my 2016.

I literally shed tears for Muhammed Ali, Phife Dawg, Prince, and Carrie Fisher. Muhammed Ali was a hero to activists. A Tribe Called Quest was my introduction into non-commercialized hip-hop. Prince is motherfucking Prince. And Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa role was my inadvertent introduction into feminism. I didn’t do the same For Bowie, Alan Rickman, Debbie Reynolds, John Glenn, Janet Reno, Patty Duke, Gene Wilder, or many of the other 150+ famous people who died this year. That said, given my grief over my top four, I have no place passing judgment on anyone else’s grief. I know that George Michael had a HUGE effect in LGBTQ people, both with his silent activism and his leaping out of the closet proudly after years of hiding his true Identity. Bowie is a magical unicorn who I thought was immortal. What he’s done for music will still be talked about years from now. He helped get black artists’ videos on MTV. On the air. DURING AN INTERVIEW. Trill shit. I didn’t even know how much Alan Rickman had an effect on people until he died. I thought he was just a really good actor. So yeah…2016 sucked. But there isn’t a rash of celebrity deaths. There’s a rash of REPORTS of celebrity deaths. Our news outlets have been ramping up their coverage of these singers, actors, artist, scientists, authors, etc. We’re more connected to them because of Facebook and Twitter. The deaths sting a little bit more, because we lost HUGE stars this year. They were our childhood heroes. They molded our tastes music and movies and books as we grew up to be somewhat functional adults. Just remember…if they were adults when WE were kids, then unfortunately, they are older now. The illnesses that older people get are visiting them now, so that is why they are getting sick and dying…except for Keith Richards. Seriously, did he self-preserve himself? WTF? So it sucks, but perspective may help.

THAT SAID, anyone who “mourn-shames” those who express grief over famous people dying is no better than the genital sweat of a syphilitic badger. Who are you to judge what people post on social media? It is SOCIAL MEDIA. The people who died are celebrities. OF COURSE people are going to talk about them. That is WHY they are celebrities. If they didn’t then the people weren’t really good at their jobs in life. Some don’t have a deep connection with the artists. So what? Everyone who does is wrong now? Some think people are just “jumping on the bandwagon”. Um…again…CELEBRITY. The way people become famous is by a lot of people rooting for them, kind of like a bandwagon. Why aren’t they making such a fuss over their uncle dying? Perhaps because their uncle is a private citizen and not a damn actor? Perhaps people express their grief for their relatives in a different way than they do a Florence Henderson or Edward Albee? What business is it of yours? There are Syrian refugees starving in a boat on the Mediterranean that these people are ignoring? OK, motherfucker. Where are all of YOUR posts about the ills of the world? Is your feed nothing but every atrocity that happened in the last 24 hours? The second I see a selfie or a post about a movie you want to watch, best believe I’ll be commenting something like, “HAVE YOU NO SHAME???? 15 GIRLS IN BROOKLYN ARE MISSING, AND YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT DESPICABLE ME 3! YOU DISGUST ME!” Seriously. You may have a right to complain about the outpouring, but you have no real ground on which to stand. Eat a bag of exploding glitter dicks, Darren.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

#WookieLivesMatter: Star Wars Episode 3.5 Synopsis

ROGUE ONE
All Bad Everything. There is no introductory scroll of words in space, so everyone thinks that maybe we were in the wrong theatre for a minute. Nerds online complain about “tradition”, because they have to actually watch the movie to figure out the story instead of having is spoon fed to them.
A spaceship shaped like defective start fruit parks on the planet Irish Marshes, WAY TOO FAR from the building they want to enter. Commander Orson Krennic inside probably had to get more steps on his FitBit to beat Commander Brenda in the Empire’s Death Star fit challenge…fucking Brenda…
There’s a little kid named Jyn Erso running who has terrible form. She was probably named after the drink she’ll be consuming in the coming years after she witnesses what is about to happen. Her hippie parents are all scared. Kid hides in a rock. Dad is all, “I’m just a farmer! Leave me alone!” Mom is all, “I’m gonna bust a cap in Orson.” Orson’s troopers cap her first, though, and it shocks everyone, because this is the first time in a long time that someone captured video of a person getting shot by authorities and they were ACTUALLY armed. Orson takes dad and forces him to be an engineer. No one can find the kid, except the rebel extremist Ghost Dog.
15 years later, Empire Pilot Bodhi steals a company ship that looks like a sea turtle and flies to Jedha to contact Ghost Dog with a message from Hippie Dad. Also, Rebel Cassian Andor from the planet Mexico and his big black Droid K-2SO free Jyn from prison, who is now an adult woman, so it’s TOTALLY not creepy when Cassian eyes her butt. The trio travel to Jedha, where Ghost Dog is planning straight up terrorist attacks against Empire troops in the Holy City that looks like a giant muffin. The terrorist attack doesn’t go great, but we are introduced to mercenary Baze Malbus and blind warrior monk Token Asian Dude. In the aftermath of the attack, the rebels take everyone to Ghost Dog’s base, where he recognizes Jyn and shows the message that got from Bodhi.
Meanwhile on the Death Star, Orson demonstrates its power to Digital Grand Moff Tarkin by blowing up the Holy City of Muffin. Ghost Dog and his rebels die, but Jyn, Bodhi, Just Baze, Token Asian Dude, Cassian, and K-2SO escape the muffsplosion™. On the Death Star, Orson thinks this demo will get him a promotion, but Digital Tarkin tells him about Bodhi defecting, uses it to take over the project, and makes him see Darth Potato about that, where he gets choked out a little bit. I’ll bet he also lost the FitBit challenge against Commander Brenda. Orson can’t win. See, Q-Tip? It’s not just record companies that are shady.
The Rebels go to the planet where Hippie Dad is forced to live, and they witness Orson asking about the leak in their facility. In typical corporate political fashion, instead of administrative leave, he kills all the engineers except for Hippie Dad. Rebels then incite an attack on the base. Jyn realizes that they weren’t there to reunite her with Hippie Dad, but to kill Hippie Dad. Hippie Dad dies, but not before saying that he is proud of her, which is more than what most fathers do. Dad.
At the Rebel Base, Jyn proposes to steal the plans for the Death Star, but like every other goddamn board meeting, no one listens to the woman, and everyone starts mansplaining and talking about just beating the Empire with their alien dicks. Jyn and a small focus group go sneak to the Empire base on the planet Dubai to steal the plans. They take Bodhi's ship that looks like a sea turtle and name it "Rogue One". Jyn, Cassian, and K-2SO sneak into the corporate headquarters in disguises while Bodhi, Token Asian Dude, Just Baze, and the other Rebels (one who looks like Ludacris) set up an ambush/distraction. Of course, the plan goes to shit, but not before Jyn and Cassian locate the Death Star files. Sadly, K-2SO got shot up and died, but he went out like a damn soldier. I think in the future, his death scene will be regaled by our robot overlords as Droid Glory. #BlackDroidsMatter. Outside Corporate, everyone else is fighting for their lives. FINALLY, the rest of the Rebels realize they should have listened to Jyn, and now they’re battling Empire forces while waiting for the space Wi-Fi to turn on so that they can download the Death Star plans.
In the meantime, everybody dies. This is Red Wedding Star Wars style. Bodhi dies. Ludacris dies. Token Asian Dude dies. Just Baze Dies. But Jyn and Cassian are able to get the Wi-Fi working, so they didn’t don’t die in vain. The plans get uploaded, and some of the Rebels escape, but Digital Tarkin orders the Death Star to destroy the base on Planet Dubai, so Jyn and Cassian die, too.
As the Empire interrupts the Rebels’ escape, the one ship that received the Death Star plans is boarded by Darth Potato, and he kills a bunch of people, but the plans still got into rebel hands of none other than General Leia Organa, who was a princess at the time. She will become a great warrior as a princess. She’ll endure some hardcore S&M, watch her planet explode with Jimmy Smits on it, inadvertently make out with her twin brother, be forced into human trafficking by a giant slug who she eventually kills, marry and have a British kid with a space pirate, and eventually divorce that dude and become a general of an alliance against space Nazis who are obsessed with giant balls that kill people. She had her shit together throughout the series. Meanwhile, Luke gets super distraught over the death of a dude he knew for like 5 hours, can’t handle a damn paternity revelation, and gives up on teaching because ONE student turns out to be a little asshole. The dudes in this series need to get their shit together. Leia was a badass mother…except for her disdain for wookies. No medal, no hug? Come on!
#WookieLivesMatter

Thursday, December 22, 2016

#WhitenessSoFragile: On Tone Policing the Brown Toned

Some inanely racist stuff happened in Rochester, NY that is a phenomenon commonly called “Tuesday”. My super-ego saved a man from being beaten within an inch of his life, and I wrote a very long Facebook post about it:
Dear Rochester white people,

I need y’all to get Your Boy™.

Last night, as I walked into a bar, Your Boy™ told me he had a cigarette for me, to which I said that I’m good since I don’t smoke. He then said, “Oops, wrong black guy. You all look alike!” which garnered a middle finger from me as I crossed the threshold into the bar…there were no other black people in the bar, by the way.

Later, Your Boy™ was on the phone talking loudly and dropped “nigger” a few times. I’m not sure if that was his regular vernacular or if he was trying to provoke me.

Next, Your Boy™ put his arm around me as I sat at the bar as if we were cool, to which I told him to step off. But then I was the asshole for not wanting to deal with him.

Finally, as I left the bar, one of Your Boy’s™ friends asked if I was their cabbie, to which I asked what the fuck his problem is and walked away. I’m not sure what they said as I walked away, but I doubt it was anything polite.

White Rochester, you need to get Your Boy™. He thought he could just be chummy with me without apologizing for everything else he did because he didn’t think his behavior was an aberration. This is an Upstate NY thing. I lived in Fayetteville, NC, in Hampton, VA, in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, and the amount of tacit accepted racism in Upstate NY surpasses all of them combined. That some dude thinks he can insult me and then act like he did nothing wrong shows how oblivious of its own otherism. Don’t ask me how I “put myself in these situations”. My skin didn’t cause the “situation”. Your Boy™ did. Don’t tell me to just go to a different venue or open my own. I have the same goddamn right to go to whatever bar I want. It’s not like I went to a lodge run by the Aryan Nation. Don’t dismiss me pointing out these things that happen as “whining”, and when I call you out on your attempts to shut me down, miss me with your claims of “reverse racism”.

Deal with Your Boy™. Check his ass when he is out of line. Don’t just do it in front of me. I don’t need a white knight. Don’t regale me of stories about how you called some Italian dude a “nigger” because he said something racist. Shut down Your Boy™ when he says/does/acts out whatever tacit racist, sexist, homophobic thing in front of you, regardless of who is around you.

I’ve been dealing with Your Boy™ nearly once a month since I’ve been in Rochester. That's 8 years. That means natives of Rochester have been dealing with him for even longer. It’s time you start checking Your Boy™, because he obviously won’t listen to just us.
Unexpectedly, some white people publicly and privately took umbrage with what I said, pointing out that they are not the white people of whom I speak who sit on the side and do nothing, and they are DEFINITELY not Your Boy™, and they know no one like that, so why should they be held responsible for people like this?

Because the objections, though from a place of shock and the feel of being unjustly lumped in with the bad, are an example of how #WhitenessSoFragile.

If you are not one of the white people who go about your day and simply ignore Your Boy™ or sit on the sideline while YB™ is doing his YB™ stuff, then my request is not about you. That should be obvious, and addressing my rant “Dear white people, but only white people who do this thing that I am about to talk about” is not efficient. You should know to whom I mean, and if you are not included in that behavioral demographic, then you should have no issue. And no, it would STILL not be okay to write something that starts with “Dear black people”, because as a white person, no matter what your socioeconomic status, you are coming from a place of power. When you come from a place of power and say, X people need to do Y to attain Z”, it just sounds subjective and condescending, because of the hundreds to thousands of years of subjugation, depending on who X is in the sentence.

When women started the hashtag #YesAllWomen, to discuss how toxic their interactions with men can be, it was almost immediately met with #NotAllMen, a hashtag that illustrates how #MasculinitySoFragile. Women implored that men start to look at themselves and their actions to end a culture that makes half of the population of the world feel less secure about their autonomy, and if a man is not guilty of any of the called –out mannerisms, then check the next men when he IS guilty of it. Fragile dudes couldn’t handle it, and started #NotAllMen. Other men realized that when women addressed “men”, they knew exactly about whom this was about and didn’t get offended. Beside the fact that I was addressing people of a certain hue instead of women, how was my post different?

Similarly, when black women started the #BlackLivesMatter movement to discuss the unfair treatment of black men and women in the justice system, it was met with #BlueLivesMatter, #AllLivesMatter, and a lot of drivel about “black on black” crime. No one hated the police, no one claimed that all lives didn’t matter, and “black on black” crime is just CRIME, which is proportionally equal to “white on white” crime. Reasonable law officers and DAs understood that #BlackLivesMatter was not against them, but a system that perpetuated a tilted dispensing of justice. Others immediately tried to frame the movement as nearly a terrorist group. All they succeeded in doing was to show that #WhitenessSoFragile.


If you are in a place of power, and you do NOT do the degenerative things that make society hostile to those with less power, then if you care, it is your responsibility to call out those who abuse that power. Slaves didn’t free themselves with the 13th Amendment. The 19th Amendment wasn’t ratified by women. The NAACP’s first president was a white guy. DOMA wasn’t deemed unconstitutional by 9 LGBT Supreme Court justices.  It is ridiculous to think that those out of power have to do all of the work to make our world better. And the clap back when those out of power talks about the actions of some or most IN power is proof of how fragile and precious that power is.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

You're the Worst at Hyperbole


Trump is going to be President of the United States of America. The electoral votes were cast on Monday, 19th December. I damn sure didn’t vote for him, and I wager that if you are reading this, you damn sure didn’t vote for him either. Maybe you signed one of the many petitions to call for a re-vote after the revelations about Russian interference. You may have donated to Jill Stein’s efforts to initiate recounts in several of the swing states that Hillary Clinton lost electorally. Did you sign the Change.org petition that called for immediate destruction of the Electoral College? Maybe you just voiced your opinion in the streets of your city, purely mad at the results, and needing to vent. I feel you. I really do. I did some of these things, but I had a feeling that none of them would help the situation. We’re going to be stuck with Trump for the next four years at a minimum. I’ll give you a hug, if you need it, I know I need one. Do anything you need to do in order to not drown in despair. But please, please, PLEASE do me one solid.
Don’t tell me that Trump’s election to the Presidency is “the worst thing to happen to America”.
WARNING: Extreme Side-Eye Ahead. (Image from the new "Roots")
I’ll give you one freebie that will still be met with extreme side-eye, but after that, expect to be read. Specifically, I'll read off most or all of the horrible things that happened in America that did NOT involve Donald Trump, so I hope you have a few days.
Let’s start with genocide. How many Native Americans do you know? If you answered one or two, that is because we killed a good amount of them in the name of expanding the nation from coast to coast under notions like Manifest Destiny, which was a doctrine born during the Polk administration. Even before Polk, Andrew Jackson did his due diligence to murder or displace as many indigenous peoples as he could. That doesn't even count his treatment of his hundreds of slaves. Thousands were displaced, and thousands died because of Jackson. If you said that all you know are Native Americans, then you likely live on a reservation of land set aside for you, BECAUSE YOU ARE NATIVE AMERICAN. If that is the case, then you know that American treaties with Native Americans don’t mean a damn thing, and the US will do whatever they want. Do you think the Standing Rock pipeline is an anomaly? Standing Rock is the norm. Trump had nothing to do with that. And before you say, “well that was just Jackson and Polk. They were jerks”, what about the 6 presidents before Jackson and the 3 between him and Polk who either did nothing to stop or actively sought the forced movement or eradication of indigenous peoples?
Let’s continue with genocide and rape. Though only 450,000 of the 10.7 million Africans were sent to the United States via the Middle Passage, Slaves multiplied exponentially through forced “breeding”. You can concoct the fantasy that slaves “enjoyed” nuclear families that we no longer have thanks to black people being irresponsible, and I can in turn resist the urge to kick your balls so hard that you cum through your mouth, and instead point out that any action executed at the behest of a master is forced, not consent and therefore RAPE. Families were regularly torn apart for punishment or profit. Let’s not forget the practice of baiting alligators with black infants. Brutalizing slaves was a normal practice, as well.  Also, the masters’ penchant for schtupping their attractive slaves was a thing. Besides my non-black father, my light skin is not the result of a recessive gene from Angola. Romanticize Sally Hemming’s relationship with a president all you like. Thomas Jefferson was a rapist. Black lives did not matter at the inception of the American Revolution, and then we only 3/5 mattered during the ratification of the Constitution. This is something the FOUNDING FATHERS DID. No black person’s safety was guaranteed. So as much lip service as the first 16 presidents may have spouted about equality and freedom, Dred Scott vs. Sandford and the Fugitive Slave Acts were things.
Let’s continue with genocide and rape and forced medical experimentation. Black people and Native Americans weren’t the only people who suffered injustices under presidents who were not Trump. While Natives were being moved and slaughtered and black people were being beaten and raped and slaughtered, women were being raped and beaten and slaughtered. Much like with Jim Crow laws, state by state, women’s rights as human beings varied. They couldn’t vote from the start, and they were often beaten or arrested if they tried. Denying sex to their husband could have garnered beatings and often spousal rape. Women were not allowed to hold office in some places. They couldn’t hold land deeds. They couldn’t go out of the house unaccompanied. Let’s talk about the “wild west”, too. It was call wild for a reason. Laws were hard to enforce, so the safety of women was never guaranteed, especially in a country where the laws didn’t really protect women in the first place. Beside the spousal rape, beside the lack of land and voting rights, and the risk of harm in the “good ol’ days”, there was the risk of medicine. Women who may have spoken up for themselves were put into mental institutions. They were forcibly sterilized. They were lobotomized to turn them into flesh and blood robots. And you know that they were sexually assaulted in those institutions, and often when they got home. Let’s face it: women were sometimes less than the 3/5ers, unless, of course a town wanted to lynch a 3/5er or burn a city to the ground, in which case, women were suddenly precious pearls that needed protecting from the nasty Negroes…unless of course the women had melanin. I honestly wonder how black women have not Hulked out by now. I just assume y’all are like the "Mark Ruffalo" Bruce Banner, and at any minute a Hummer is going to go flying into the air. Trump had no hand in any of this. Every president, from Washington to Lincoln, from Andrew Johnson to Wilson, either had a hand in deterring women’s rights, or they just didn’t give a damn about women enough to care.
I’m 1,000 words into this, and I still haven’t touched on mistreatment of the disabled, the gratuitous mistreatment of military veterans going all the way back to the War of 1812 (that I’m sure you’ll still blame on Obama), the harboring of Nazi scientists, the Chinatown lynchings in California, the Japanese internment, the Tuskegee Experiment, the willful ignoring of lynching of people of color from 1866 to NOW, the lack of punishment of rapists (unless the assailant is brown and the victim is white), the sanctioned ghettoizing and redlining, the use of unwitting people of color for medical experimentation and sterilization, child labor…I could go on, but I do not wish to write a term paper.
The point is that Trump was not president during all of these things done under our nation’s banner. He may be a product of it, but you cannot pin all this on him. So unless he does worse than all of US history, then you will get read for saying that he’s “the worst thing to happen to America”. Given his Ku Klux Kabinet, he can do some serious damage to the Republic, but if he tries to do something like round up Muslims, and we don’t fight it tooth and nail, then that is on us. If you are one of the 47% of people who didn’t vote, this is your time for redemption. If you DID vote, then you need to take the next steps to resist any of the bullshittery that Trump may try to do. We can’t rest on the idea that he “doesn’t REALLY want to be President” and hope he’ll quit. That type of thought train is what got him the electoral votes in the first place. Keep in mind that nearly 3 million more people voted for Clinton than for Trump, that doesn’t include votes for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. In total, 7 million more people who cared enough voted against Trump than voted for him. That means that there should be 7 million people voicing their opposition to any of the unconstitutional tripe that Trump tries to enact. If trump is the “worst to happen to America”, then it’s on us.  I highly doubt he’ll reenact slavery again, though. After all, we still have a tilted prison system.

Friday, December 9, 2016

White Privilege Jones and the Quest for Assistance

Dear white people,
I need your help. Often, then the talk of white privilege comes up, one of you says something to the effect of, “It doesn’t count for poor whites. It’s really more economical!”, to which I usually respond that money has nothing to do with this type of privilege, to which the rebuttal is something to the effect of, “Actually, poor blacks have MORE privilege, because there are more programs for them!”, to which I ask exactly what programs, to which I hear something to the effect of, “They’re out there! You just have to sign up for them!” which does not answer my question at all. That would be like me saying that you have more cars than me, and then you ask me exactly what are these cars of which I speak, and I just rephrase, “You have all those cars! Just look! Just go out to the parking lot!”
I’m sure you know how many cars you own, and you know where you parked it. But what if there is some truth to my claim that you have more cars? I mean, you signed just that one title, but maybe you sleepwalked to a dealership and bought another one! It’s possible you have a whole other car, and you don’t even know, but I do, because I SAID you do, and it’s your own fault for not knowing about the other car you have! JUST LOOK AT THE GODDAMN CAR, GARY!
So like the car that I just said you have but didn’t specify what type of car it is or where in the lot it is, I need some help from you, Greg. Just telling me that there are a bunch of programs isn’t telling me WHAT those programs are. I know you don’t mean welfare or food stamps, because that is for everyone under a certain economic level, and besides, more whites have benefitted from them, as they always have since their inceptions. It’s too late for me. I grew up abject poor, and my mother had to be on welfare and disability and food stamps and a bunch of other programs in order to make ends meet, but they were offered to everyone in our dire straits regardless of race. We STILL wound up homeless when I was in high school, and we lost nearly everything of what little we had. So since you are MUCH more apt at social work and more resourceful than us poor black people, please enlighten me. What are these programs that white people know about that no black people know about, but are apparently exclusive to black people? I need names. Where is OUR goddamn car? It will help me cause more tension during Thanksgiving dinner.
I know you can’t be talking about welfare, because as far back as 1935, the social safety net was not specifically made for black people. In fact, in many ways, attempts were made to exclude black people from benefits. Due to the high unemployment and needing to take on “off the books” jobs, black people could never prove their income, and they were excluded from many services. Also, many of the criteria were state-determined, so this allowed states to openly discriminate or reduce the amount of help that black people received.
You can’t be talking about HUD, The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created specifically to help house the most vulnerable of society, but they were thinking poor and old people. HUD did nothing to stop state-sanctioned redlining, which ghettoized blacks and kept them from attaining collective economic growth. I can see why you may have thought that the Department of Housing and URBAN Development was strictly for black people, though. Just keep in mind that HUD was born long before “Urban” was code for “niggers”.
I’m sure you don’t think that law enforcement programs like Broken Glass Policy and Stop and Frisk are “benefits”. As nice as it seems that there are more police in a particular neighborhood keeping it safe, It has done very little to help reduce crime. They have done wonders to foment distrust amongst the police and the communities, though! Each group sees each other as the aggressor and criminals, and both parties are partially correct! Some police took advantage of their power to participate in criminal acts, and others justified their harsh/dismissive treatment of individuals in black neighborhoods by stating that they were inherently more violent and less intelligent. Black people saw that they could not trust the police upon seeing them do criminal acts, so they took matters into their own hands. Other black people, since they could not get decent jobs (see redlining), took advantage of lack of decent police protection to make money on their own, any way they could, and that usually meant resorting to crime. This is the social equivalent of the MC Escher hands drawing each other.  It’s already been proven in New York that when Stop and Frisk stopped, crime went down. You cannot convince me that me being stopped and put on the ground for various reasons every week while I was trying to go to school or work was a “benefit”.
So…now that we’ve covered the obvious go-tos, pleeease…tell me what these programs are! The fate of the black community depends on you, oh disdainful white person. If black and brown people would use these programs that all of you white people claim exist, then we’d FINALLY rise up out of poverty and have something to leave their progeny. If you do this, I will be forever grateful. If you can’t name any, don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re well rested. I got a deal on really comfortable stadium seats. You can take all of them.
Love,

You ol’ incompetent black friend 

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Tips for Equating BLM with the KKK

Thanks to Tomi Lahren appearing on The Daily Show last night, the comparison of the BLM movement to the KKK has resurfaced and is gaining popularity.
…We see y’all. We know what you’re doing.
This is not the first time that organized groups of color have been equated with the KKK. Just look at the original Black Panthers, La Raza, the NAACP, SNCC, and pretty much any other group that fought for equality for people of color. It’s funny that people think we’re so scary and have the power to pull off what the Ku Klux Klan has done to this country. I want to help the people who wish to make this claim legitimate. Here are some pointers on how to make the [minority group]/KKK comparison sound more believable:
After saying, “BLM is just like the KKK”, point out the many incidents when BLM rode in the night and put burning B’s on white people’s front lawns because they moved into predominantly black neighborhoods.
Give examples of the times that the NAACP members joined police forces and arrested white people for crimes as little as not nodding their heads to black people.
Show how La Raza covertly and sometimes openly got elected to various parts of the justice system so that they could prosecute and and punish white people in kangaroo courts.
Provide pictures of the members of SNCC leading raids on white people’s homes to kidnap, the residents, castrate and torture them, and then gleefully burn them alive or hang them while others take pictures, all because of false claims of them robbing or raping an innocent black woman.
Tell me all the times when the Black Panthers, in efforts to stem the voting rights of white people, not only got elected to loncal municipalities to pass language and grandfather clauses for voting, and when that didn’t work, started bombing white churches, not caring if anyone was in the church or not.
Once you can do any of these things, THEN your claim that BLM is the new KKK will be valid.
Actually, one more thing: Name all the black people who helped the KKK start up in the first place, and show me all the times that equality groups of color excluded white people from their ranks. The fact is that nearly every group of color welcomed white allies in their ranks, including the original Black Panthers. Groups of color have been all inclusive regardless of their names, because they know what it is like to be excluded. Even our fraternities and sororities have some white people in them. None of them sang on a bus about how they’d sooner hang a white guy than allow them into AFA.
Now, I’m well aware that riots have erupted from some BLM protests. I recognize that destruction of property is not a great way to get your point across. Leaders in BLM explicitly and immediately disavow these people who dare incite violence in their names. The movement is nonviolent. People sometimes are not. No one in BLM chanted to kill cops. Those who did are not part of the movement. If you are so disdainful of the violence that sparked after some protests (violence that often started with people not associated with the marches), then where is your disdain for people who riot when their teams win, or when their teams lose, or when it’s Decorative Gourd Season, or when that a head coach of a football team gets fired for covering up child rape? BLM are asking for respect, and that is unreasonable, but sports teams, pumpkins and getting punished for covering up child rape is just “releasing stress”?
Murderers of cops are NOT part of the movement. They may have co-opted its name, much like Susan G. Komen co-opted the Breast Cancer Awareness movement. The people who killed cops and claimed they were exacting revenge in the name of BLM have also been shown to have no actual ties to BLM. Anyone can claim that they are part of something that they are not to commit crimes. If you really  cared about the lives of cops, you’d be more concerned that nearly three quarters of police officers were killed by white men, not black people.
Some will say that if I am decrying these people co-opting the cause, then I should afford the same benefit of the doubt for Trump regarding his neo-nazi and KKK endorsements. The difference is that the BLM movement IMMEDIATELY DECRIED the actions of those who did fucked up things in their names. Trump first pretended he didn’t know who David Duke was even though he did, was silent about their endorsements throughout the campaign, and then FINALLY denounced them and people’s actions, but then hired at LEAST two white supremacists to his cabinet. Actions speak much louder than his words.

So once you can point out the times that groups of color actively and successfully oppressed the rights of white people, then you can call them “black supremacists” or “reverse racists” or whatever inane neologisms you like, and I’ll be happy to agree. Until then, just admit that you don’t like it when brown people talk.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Trump's Tenure Prediction: Same as It Ever Was

I felt the same amount of mild panic and anguish that everyone who was anti-Trump felt when he crossed the Electoral threshold to become our next President Elect. What happens now? Will he implement all the things he claimed that he would, even the unconstitutional ones? How did the candidate that was backed by the KKK and the American Nazi Party win? That alone should be a deal breaker! WTF, America?
The next day, hate crimes spiked. Muslim women in hijab were forcibly uncovered. Gay Pride flags were burned on people's own property. Bullies in school have gotten cocky. Swastikas abound. A few of my friends were harassed in the street regarding their voting rights being taken away. Someone slowed down his PT Cruiser to tell me to get a job and call me a dumb [something] monkey, doubling the flow of my racist period. I usually only get called a racial epithet once a month, and I thought I had already met my quota when earlier in the week someone told called me a “dumb nigger” for thinking that CSS is a programming language...which is something I never claimed…
Protests popped up everywhere, some of them violent. The vitriol online hit a high I had not seen since...the last presidential election. Besides racist conservative assholes calling Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” and sexist liberal assholes sharing more nude pictures of Melania Trump, the arguments amongst my friends and acquaintances yielded many hurt feelings and blocked former friends. I had to take a break from participating in social media for a week or so. I only observed, just to keep up with the news.
The future will always be uncertain, but after about two weeks, it doesn't look like much will change. I’m sure many will disagree, given some of Trump’s initial appointments to his cabinet. Steve Bannon is to be Chief of Staff. Former CEO of Breitbart Steve Bannon is reviled as a rabid anti-semite, but that is an unfair description. Steve Bannon is a rabid racist and misogynist as well. He likely has rabies. He presided over a “news” organization that would be able to demonize minorities, no matter how innocuous the story. A story that would headline here on Earth-1 as “Chicago Teen Saves Kitten from Burning Pet Store” would headline in Bannon’s Earth-1849 as “BLM Thug Loots Innocent Cat From Building He Just Burned”. He recently stated that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley, and that they may disrupt civic society. The fact is that there is only 1 Asian executive per 201, but that is likely one too many for Bannon. He has found someone else to scapegoat for any of his shortcomings. Congratulations, Asians. You’re the new Jews.
Trump also picked Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. If the word “Alabama” wasn’t enough of a clue, Jeff Sessions is one of the US Senate’s most prominent bigoted pieces of shit, likely second only to Iowa Senator Steve King. Sessions is a champion of anti-amnesty programs. His racist apologies for the KKK cost him federal judgeship. He is anti-abortion, and anti-women’s rights in general. And if there were anyone who would spearhead a Muslim registry program, Sessions is definitely the “man” to do it.
Despite these two appointments, I still don’t think much will change. I say this, because even before January, Trump is rolling back on some of the things he said during the race. Remember when he said Hillary Clinton should be in jail? On 60 Minutes he did a 180, stating that she couldn’t have been a nicer person, and her family is beautiful. He rolled back his staunch “repeal and replace” rhetoric on Obamacare. Even his promise to build a wall on the Mexican Border is faltering. Now he says that he’d be OK with a fence. We should have expected that. His entire campaign was founded on offense. I AM NOT SORRY ABOUT THAT PUN. Despite his choices of white supremacists for AG and and Chief of Staff, his initial choice for CoS was Reince Priebus. The supposedly anti-establishment, outside-the -Beltway candidate chose the head of the Republican National Committee as a cabinet member. How anti-establishment will you be if YOU HIRE THE ESTABLISHMENT? Moreover, when he met with Obama, every image of them together was of Obama sitting tall and proud, and Trump slouched like he had been defeated. I know this look. This is what fuckboys do when they talk about you LOUD behind your back, but can’t bear to look you in the eye. I saw this look in a dude who called me a nigger as I was riding my bike, but was meek as a kitten when I rode up on the sidewalk and demanded that he repeat himself. Trump obviously is out of his depth, and he knows it. He has not been inaugurated yet, and he’s already a mess. Therefore, I’m not as worried about this Trump-transition. That does NOT mean, though, that things will be better.
Simply by virtue of the amount of hate crimes and harassment by emboldened bigots in the first week of the election, I can tell that white supremacy will be a little bit more normalized, kind of like the way it was prior to the 21st Century. I should expect to be called “nigger” bi-weekly instead of monthly. If Sessions is going to be Attorney General, we should expect all the investigations into police bias and sexual assault on campuses and in education institutions will stop, because Sessions doesn’t give a damn about women or black people. Homophobic bigots will be able to hide behind their hate by claiming “state’s rights” or “religious liberty”, just the way racist bigots did in the 1960s. I know what to expect, but that doesn’t mean we should be resigned to it. It means we now know what we need to do to combat it.
I saw a lot of my white friends distraught over the Trump win. How could (less than) half of America vote for someone who is such an anathema to America’s promise of equality? My friends of color saw this as a phenomenon called “Tuesday”, though. We’ve been talking about this stuff for decades. Trump’s greatest achievement prior to even becoming president was to show liberal white people who were doubtful of marginalized people’s claims that bigotry in America is alive, well, and festering in the open. This is not to say that all Trump voters are racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim, homophobic bigots. Some of them just don't give a fuck about people of color, women, non-Christians, or the LGBT community. They claim it's about the economy, and we must take them at their word. They think that electing someone who bankrupted businesses, cheated people out of pay for their work, and ran his businesses like pyramid schemes or straight up racketeering fronts is the remedy to a president who cut the national deficit by $1 trillion and fomented continual job growth. For some, money > people's lives. Don't you feel better for know who they are? It is callous to say that everything will be all right (I am guilty of saying it myself), but trust me, we’ve survived dismissive leaders since Thomas Jefferson’s initiation of the #AllLivesMatter movement. We’ll survive this. But we won’t by sitting on our asses and doing nothing.
Minorities of all races, religions, creeds, and genders, you have to be EXTRA whatever you are. For the next 4 years, I’m going to be black as fuck. No...I’m going to be black as FUUUUCCCKKKK! I’m replacing my white noise machine with an endless loop of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King speeches. My alarm is going to be Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”. I’m gonna talk through ALL your movies,drop ebonics ALL through my vernacular, bump my music loud and bass heavy, write revolutionary slam poetry, do my taxes on time, dance through TSA Pre-Check, all types of black shit. I encourage other groups to do it up, too. Ladies, woman UP. Gays, SLAY. Latinos, Viva le Revolucion! Jews, get Schwifty! Muslims, Hijab so hard [I have no idea how that would look]. And if you see someone getting shit, DEFEND YOUR COMRADES. If you are not a straight white man, you are a target for derision in Trump’s America. We all need to be allies in this world. Our humanity is at stake. And ss much as I hate to say it, Trump and his constituents are right. We need to stop being politically correct. Stop calling it the “alt-right”. Call it what it is: white supremacist shit-baggery. Bannon isn’t a leader of the alt-right. He’s a white supremacist bag of human filth!

This is how we’ll survive the next four years. I’m sure that the Dems in Congress will be as obstructionist AF. Send RBG gift baskets of protein bars and fruit. Make your voice hear during the mid-term elections, and look out for your fellow humans. We got through Plessy v. Ferguson, through Japanese Internment, through that shitty Dick Tracy cartoon, through the failure of the Equal RIghts Act. We’ll get through this, and we’ll be better for it.

Friday, November 4, 2016

The Pristine Republican President: A Short Film

[IN 2007, AFTER THE LACKLUSTER EXCITEMENT OF GEORGE HW BUSH, THE SEX SCANDALS OF BILL CLINTON, AND THE DRUNK DRIVING CONVICTIONS AND SEEMINGLY UNRULY CHILDREN OF GEORGE W BUSH, Carl Gets ON HIS KNEES AND PRAYs.]
CARL: Are you there God? It’s me, Carl.
GOD: Yes, my son.
CARL: OH MY YOU! YOU ANSWERED!
GOD: See, this is why I stopped making house calls after my son died. You humans always lose your minds. Calm down! Tell me why you called for me, Carl. What do you request?
CARL: I just wish for a future truly Republican president, definitely a man. a Christian.
GOD: You already have that. You’ve had that since 1789. It’s been a consistent thing.
CARL: Yes, but how about one who has a pristine record, like no lingering sex scandals.
GOD: OHHH! Ok, I can provide that.
CARL: But…can he be young and exciting, who will get the youth excited?
GOD: A Young man in the 21st Century WITHOUT and weird sex scandals? Oy vey…
CARL: What?
GOD: Nevermind. I still can do this. I’m God! Any other requests?
CARL: Really?! Ooh! OK, he has to have roots in conservative communities, like say, Kansas or something. His wife has to be beautiful no matter what age she is. When he gets in the White House, his wife should put her head down and focus on something like gardening or something innocuous like that. It would be nice if he has a sweet mother-in-law who moves into the White House, too. He should have adorable children, and maybe a dog! He should know the Constitution inside and out, like if he studied it for years, but he still needs to express devout Christian views when talking about people. He should be hard on immigration. Deport as many “illegals” as possible, no matter what the circumstances! Bomb the shit out of the Middle East! Just like we said right after 9/11: “Bomb them all, and let YOU sort it out!” Also under him, job growth should skyrocket within 8 years, get us out of the recession we’re in. We need to make the economy great again. Also, maybe create a health plan like the ones Republicans proposed back in the 1980s that keeps the insurance companies in business, because universal healthcare too commie-like.
GOD: That is a lot to ask, but I’ll take care of it.
CARL: Thank you, Lord!
[1 YEAR LATER, OBAMA IS ELECTED.]
CARL: NOOOOOO!!!!
[CARL CRIES FOR 8 YEARS. HIS TEARS ARE DELICIOUS. IN 2015, CARL PRAYS TO GOD AGAIN.]
CARL: God? Are you there?
GOD: For the umpteenth time, I’m ALWAYS there. Will you please look up “omniscience”?
CARL: But it has the word, “science” in it!
GOD: (Oh my Me. This dude…) What to you want, Carl?
CARL: I was wondering how you were doing with that pristine President I asked for? I assumed that the last 8 years of Obama was the trials and tribulations before you brought forth the true Republican candidate, but these guys don’t look that great, and Carly Fiorina is a girl.
GOD: Oh but, Carl, I gave you exactly what you wanted. He’s a president with no sex scandals who is young and gets the youth excited for him. He has roots in not one, but TWO conservative communities, including Kansas. His wife is beautiful and seemed to not age. When he got to the White House, his wife put her head down and focused on gardening or something innocuous like exercise. His sweet mother-in-law moved into the White House for a while, too. He has adorable children, and he got a dog. He knows the Constitution inside and out so much that he is a Constitutional lawyer. He still expresses devout Christian views when talking about people. He’s hard on immigration. He’s deported so many “illegals” no matter what the circumstances, he is nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief”! He bombs the shit out of the Middle East. Just like you said right after 9/11: “Bomb them all, and let ME sort it out!” (Thanks for the extra paperwork, by the way, dick.) Also under him, job growth should skyrocketed within 8 years, he got you out of the recession we’re in. The budget deficit fell from $1.4 trillion to $486 BILLION. He made the economy great again. Also he signed a health plan like the ones Republicans proposed back in the 1980s, and it keeps the insurance companies in business, because you said that universal healthcare too “commie-like”.
CARL: But…but…NOOOOOOO!!!!
GOD: HahaHAAA! Careful what you wish for, bitch! You just got PUNKED! Also, since I have all the power of the universe, I can change genders any time I want! I was in ALL your bathrooms! Old Testament God is BACK, Fools!”

[CARL CRIES FOR 8 MORE YEARS. HIS TEARS REPLENISH THE CALIFORNIA RESERVOIR.]

Thursday, November 3, 2016

How Dumb Your "SJW" Insult Is, As Explained in SWV Singles.

Dear Idiots,
When you get into an argument with me, and you call me an “SJW”, you are not insulting me.
The second you say SJW, my brain initially registers it as “SWV”, which is Sisters with Voices, which was one of my favorite R&B groups of the 1990s. I’m humming “Downtown” as I write this, so your attempt to make me Lose My Cool has failed before I’ve even started to parse what it actually means.
When This Feeling of nostalgia subsides, I STILL don’t get insulted.  SJW stands for “Social Justice Warrior”. Is that really bad? I’m sure you think that you’re making it Rain on my parade, but Can We just break down what your intent is, and how you actually keep my Soul Intact? You’re TRYING and failing to make my speaking up for blacks, Latinos, women, LGBTQ people, handicapped people, non-Christians, etc. fleetingly “trendy”, as if I’m sidling up to a group du jour and Co-Signing on their platforms, but then next week is a New Beginning, and I'll glom onto another cause and act like I was Right Here the whole time. Whatcha Need to know is that I’m black and Latino and non-Christian. That’s three of the groups for which I’m fighting. That means I have a PERSONAL VESTED INTEREST in ensuring the safety and fair treatment of THREE of these groups of human beings for which you think I’m not advocating just because it’s a Fine Time. And my support for the other groups of people is because I see that the unfairness I experience also happens in parallel to others. You think I’m Weak for wanting to help other people, But if you Use Your Heart, perhaps you’d be a little bit less myopic. I wish to help others, because I’m NOT AN ASSHOLE. You’re “accusing” me of caring about other people beside myself. Good job; you’ve deemed me a loser because I Love Unconditionally.
Even if my dedication were as fleeting as you’d like to depict, let’s look at SJWs throughout history. Every one of them was on the right side of history. Your implication is that Someone who takes up a cause for Anything related to social equality is an SJW. So Frederick Douglass was an SJW, and his name is on schools everywhere. Susan B. Anthony was an SJW, and she was one of FOUR women in the history of the US to bless the face of US currency. Martin Luther King CALLED himself a warrior for justice. Nobel Motherfucking Prize. Harriet Tubman fought in the Civil War and freed hundreds of slaves. She's about to to oust a slave-owning bigot from his place on the $20 bill. I could go on All Night Long. They’re Always On My Mind. They risked their lives to Release Some Tension in the world. Ain’t No Man (or woman) made a name for themselves by not giving a fuck…Except maybe Nero.
So you call me an “SJW” as if it were an insult. If You Only Knew how ridiculous you sound, perhaps you’d step up your insult game. You won’t, though, because deep down you are selfish, and It’s All About U. At worst, you want to turn the clock back to when you Think you’re Going to Like It, but what you neglect to realize is that the brunt of the work to make your life easier was on the backs of the groups who now think It’s About Time to Come and Get Some parity in the world, after years of inequality. You’re the One who looks foolish. And when we DO make strides, I hope that our work doesn’t Keep You Home. Come voice your grievances! That’s What I’m Here For. I need to collect your tears When U Cry. I won’t say That’s What I Need to keep me going, but it definitely helps me see how I’m doing, and what I’m doing is working.
…Human Nature Radio Remix.
Love,
Me.

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