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nativenews: “ American Students Think Native Americans Are All Dead When education professor Sara Shear looked at academic standards for elementary and secondary schools in all 50 states, she found that a staggering 87 percent of references to Native...

nativenews:

American Students Think Native Americans Are All Dead

When education professor Sara Shear looked at academic standards for elementary and secondary schools in all 50 states, she found that a staggering 87 percent of references to Native Americans portrayed them as a population only existing before 1900.

“[Students] were coming into college believing that all Natives are dead,” she said. Perhaps this explains the general comfort in dressing up as Natives for Halloween, turning them into team mascots, and their overall lack of exposure in the media.

Aside from the Thanksgiving and Columbus Day narrative—still presented as an inevitable clash that the colonizers handled reasonably—little to nothing is said on the contemporary issues Native Americans are facing. “Nothing about treaties, land rights, water rights. Nothing about the fact that Nations are still fighting to be recognized and determine sovereignty,” Shear said.

New Mexico is the only state to even mention the name of a single member of the American Indian Movement; in fact, half the states don’t even name specific Nations or individual Natives (the most common being Sacagawea, Squanto, Sequoyah, and Sitting Bill). Washington is the only state to use the word “genocide” when referring to Natives (to their fifth graders), and Nebraska’s textbooks go so far as to portray Natives as lazy, drunk, or criminal, Shear found.

“This kind of curriculum, these misconceptions—all that has led to the invisibilization of Indigenous People,” said Tony Castro, a social studies education professor who assisted in Shear’s research project. While curriculum guidelines fail in their Native American coverage, he was disappointed to find that teachers didn’t tailor their lesson plans to the truth. “What we teach acts as a mirror to what we value and what we recognize as legitimate. These standards are perpetuating a misconception and are continuing to marginalize groups of people and minimize the concerns or issues those people have about being full citizens in the American democracy.”

(via theglamoroussoul)

Jul 22, 2016

bornabitch-allthedaysandnights:

acidalchemixer:

I swear someone could go stranded on a desert island and have their hair naturally dread up and they would STILL consider it cultural appropriation

This post proves the point of why nonblack people shouldn’t ‘dread’ their hair.

Only afrotextured (3c-4c type hair) dreads naturally because of its corkscrew shape.

All other types of hair matt, which is a whole different process where the cuticle of the hair has to be damaged and raised, revealing the inner sticky core of the hair in order for the hair strands to stick to one another. (picture for example here)

Obviously, these 2 things are not the same.

That’s why all it takes for black people to have dreads is a little twisting and some kind of moisturizing product, and a life time commitment to constant maintenance & hygiene. Black people’s dreadlocks are CLEAN.

And why white people do silly shit like back combing, the ‘twist n rip’ method, elmers glue, not washing their hair, and other forms of damage, lack of hygiene and neglect to achieve an imitation of the real thing they consider a ‘low effort’ hairstyle.

Ultimately the non-black people neglecting their hair to imitate dreadlocks are reinforcing the negative stereotypes about black hair that have existed for centuries and led to white people making laws against black people’s natural hair,saying black people’s hair is unprofessional, continue to make rules against natural black hair, fire black people for their for their natural hair, threatened black people with expulsion for their natural hair,assaulted black people for their hair etc

(via sunflowerjawn)

Jul 03, 2016

beingjayecee:

freetharobots:

ham-for-ham:

ham-for-ham:

ask-elizabeth-holly-hamilton:

ham-for-ham:

Who wants to hear how I rekted a straight boys ego in gym class today? Because in really fucking proud rn

*is waiting*

*cracks knuckles* okay nerds listen the fuck up.

So I’m in a special gym class for the swim team, so it’s coed with the boys and girls swim team for my school. It’s leg day, and I was setting up my rack for squats. Now I don’t usually go hard in gym because I don’t fucking care and I’m a 3 season athlete, I don’t actually need extra fuxking exercise. I only put maybe 10 pounds on the bar, and this fucking twig looking punk ass comes from fucking nowhere and starts laughing. Mind you I’m taller than fucking everyone in this class, I towered over this twerp. I ask him why he’s laughing, and he says, WITH A STRAIGHT FACE, “Women are so weak” and I almost decked his ass right then but I bite my tongue. For no fucking reason he decided to continue, “Why are women even in sports, they can’t do anything! What’s your max, 50 pounds?” And all his friends are laughing and telling him how cool this he is. So I challenge him to a squatting challenge, I want to see how much weight he can squat. He’s all reluctant now, saying how that wasn’t safe for me, how I might hurt myself, but my swim coach comes from behind and says she would like to see it so he’s like “Fine, whatever, if you get hurt it ain’t my fault.”

He proceeds to put fucking 100 pounds on, my ass is trying not to laugh because wow that’s “a lot”, and the whole time he is struggling, groaning and making gross ass male noises, and only got 4 reps in. He sets it back on the rack and looks at me with this fucking smirk, surrounded by his douche group, and omg I’m about to just drop kick his ass, and he does that stupid hand motion towards the rack. I walk over and my team members ask me how much I want. I tell them to double it. Everyone stops and my coach is smiling cause she knows how much I can squat. My teammates are like “… Are you sure?” And I tell them how I’m fucking ready. So they put 100 more pounds on, making it now 200 pounds, and I tell them to back off. I then walk over and add 50 more pounds, the whole time looking at this white trash. He looks like a dead man, crusty lookin ass about to pass out. The bar now has 250 pounds, and I get 15 reps in. I set it down and I walk up to him, not having broken a sweat, and just pat him on the cheek before continuing on with my workout. My teammates are all freaking out, telling me how cool that was and how they never knew, but the boys team looks like they’re going to cry. I’m really fucking sore but I regret nothing.

That’s the story how I went up in weight for my squat with the pure determination of breaking up fuckbois dreams @ask-elizabeth-holly-hamilton

Okay I was looking back on this because we were maxing today and my coach said that wasn’t my max and I’m like??? What, and I realized I never accounted for the bar, so that makes total weight was 295.

You’re fuckin awesome !

SLAY!

Yaasss

Jul 03, 2016

monaut:

popthirdworld:

President Obama offered to pay for Vice President Biden’s son’s cancer treatment after finding out Biden was considering selling his house to pay for it. That’s really kind but… holy shit. If the *Vice President* has to *sell his house* to pay for healthcare, what chance do regular Americans have? How is anyone still alive in that country?? Australia, do not do anything to creep in the direction of America’s healthcare system. Keep Medicare free. Including frikking pap smears.

yeah this is real, unfortunately

(via blvckflamingo)

Jul 03, 2016

thekingjobe:

thekingjobe:

18 year old Tania Harris was shot twice by police in Robbinsdale, MN yesterday. Police were called to the scene to protect her from a potential fight and are claiming she had a knife but her mother and witnesses are saying that her mother had taken the knife from her before police shot her.

Tania was cuffed and put in the back of the squad car after being shot.

She survived the shooting and is in stable condition.

The local activists are already planning actions around supporting her.

…i cannot believe the notes…i appreciate everyone who has been sharing this

Black Women Matter

(via iheardtheycallmejane)

Jul 03, 2016

Hillary stood up  for the death penalty to exonerated death row inmate Ricky Jackson who was wrongly convicted of murder

kirstinthereckless:

blackmattersus:

  • Ricky Jackson, an Ohio man who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1975, confronted Hillary Clinton about the death penalty
  • Jackson, who spent 39 years on death row, became emotional as he asked Clinton how could she maintain her stance on the death penalty
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EXPOSE HER!!! Look at her face! No sympathy! No remorse! I can’t stand her…

(via iheardtheycallmejane)

Jul 03, 2016

lezbianprince:

When a mass shooting occurs, we talk about gun control and mental health issues, but we never talk about toxic masculinity or male violence. Women have access to guns. Women suffer from mental health issues. So what’s the difference? Why can’t we talk about it in those terms?

(via mielparaoshun)

Jun 11, 2016

The Glorification of White Crime

furrybrownbear:

daughterofmulan:

Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.

White mobs.

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White pirates.

image

White serial killers.

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White political corruption

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White drug dealers

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I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.

When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.

When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.

If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish” behavior. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fanbase who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.

The idea that crime can be so heavily romanticized and glorified to such a degree is undoubtedly a privilege given to white characters. The next time you hear someone talk about Dexter Morgan or Walter White in a positive way, it may be an opportunity to rethink how white people can always able to be seen as people no matter what they do, while everyone else can be boiled down to nothing but a criminal.

This tea is delicious.

(via mielparaoshun)

Jun 11, 2016
"Porn narratives are not simply those accessed by users; they also find their way into mainstream cultural images: the jeans advertisement that replicates a gang bang scenario; the perfume advertisement mimicking the penetration of a woman’s shaved vulva; the underwear advertisement that utilizes an “up-skirting” image. What these kinds of images do — and there is certainly no shortage of them, on billboards, in magazines, online — is cumulatively to tell us what women are about: that the defining feature of women’s bodies is that they are available and violable. Not only does pornography entail very direct forms of violence in its production; it also, in a world where violence against women is endemic, serves to naturalize and normalize such violence. As Galtung says, “Cultural violence makes direct and structural violence look, even feel, right — or at least not wrong.”"
- Julia Long, Pornography is more than just sexual fantasy. It’s cultural violence. (via birdsy-purplefishes)

(via mielparaoshun)
Jun 11, 2016

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