Much like midterm elections, the 2015 Academy Awards will finally shine a light on that long oppressed and often overlooked minority group: Straight white men.
We see violence not only in the crimson of blood spilled far too many times but also in the varying shades of brown on the skins of people of color. To be a person of color in the United States, and in the global narrative, is to be the shadow of violence.
Unfortunately, when you’re eleven and sick of being bullied and having only internet friends, you don’t really see the “caution, permanently internalizing white heteronormative ideals” signs posted ten years ahead in the future.
My name is KaeLyn Rich, my legal name, the name my parents gave me when they adopted me, the only name I know and answer to, the name I can pronounce. My first name was Lee Eun Jeong, assigned by the orphanage, strange on my tongue.
Here’s your 2015 Queer Lady TV epic infographic! Learn more about what’s coming up for us on the small screen on Autostraddle.
When young people of color are shown that they can make a difference in their communities and in their own lives, prison doesn’t seem like such an inevitable outcome, and commitment to creating justice without police in our communities is a tangible action towards dismantling the prison industrial complex. In addition to fighting for reforms within the prison system, we can keep people out of prison in the first place. We can literally be the change we wish to see in the world.
I read each update about Ayotzinapa and think about riding a public bus in Juárez, years and years ago. The school bus, gutted inside and painted a dull brown outside, cost me almost nothing to take me from one part of inner Ciudad Juárez back to the international bridge linked to El Paso. While it bounced and took sharp turns, I stared out the window at the city’s landscape, knowing that the bus I sat in resembles the same type of bus that transports maquiladoras to and from the factories. It is the same type of bus involved in their disappearances. For all we know, it is the same type of bus that dumps their bodies in the Juárez Valley. I think about the missing women.
Mónica Teresa Ortiz via Burials in the Mist of Dawn on Autostraddle
And here’s where family drama, cultural context, the larger institutions of racism, and immigration policies get all muddled. Now, where is that immigrant who moved from Caracas to get a degree in the states to help me when I need him? (I mean, I have all these questions, Dad, about who I am and where I come from, what languages I should speak and what my place is as an American.)
I rock my natural hair long and wild. I spend exorbitant amounts of money on paraben and silicone free hair products so that I can grow it longer and wider. I hang onto my curls like they are the very things that define me. I think it’s difficult to find a sense of balance when you are constantly being told you’re “not really black” or “not really gay.” Even as I consciously tackle these issues I feel like my hair is my security blanket, my constant. And it is precious. And you may not touch it because it is a mystery to you and that is okay with me. I’d prefer to remain mysterious while I figure my own shit out.
This holigay season, Franchesca Ramsey’s got you covered when it comes to shutting up your racist relatives. Watch the video and kick some ass.
We were walked to the slave quarters, some still standing, others restored. They were basic shacks, between three and five to a room. Although tiny, they were bigger than I thought they would be. We were told of the French colonial slave-keeping laws, which were apparently more humane than those of American, British or Spanish colonial laws. When we were told that the slaves were encouraged to be married, that young girls must be sold along with their mothers and kept from work until the age of fourteen, and eventually buried alongside their masters in the Catholic cemetery, we caught ourselves doing that raised-eyebrow, pompous nod of surprise until we were able to remind each other that these people, however less oppressed than their neighbors, were still fucking slaves.