02 5 / 2013
This body of work is an exploration of the extent of cultural appropriation and encourages a discussion about it. I give the appropriator and the appropriated the opportunity to defend themselves and create a dialogue between them, while maintaining a neutral stance myself. I am not attacking those who appropriate, merely educating and creating awareness. I’m also exploring appropriation myself, and discovering the carying degrees of it within this visual conversation.
I’d like to make this a long term exploration, with a lot more participants as a form of generation-wide debate. If you’d like to be photographed to add your point of view, please do not hesitate to pop me a message here or an email at sanaahamid@yahoo.com and we could work something out!
27 4 / 2013
Now imagine you’re an “objective” racist white scientist who decides to give a group of black men a STI and, instead of treating them for it, watch them slowly suffer from it so you can study it FOR SCIENCE.
Now imagine you’re the white supremacist sexist medical establishment that denies women the right to get their tubes tied unless they already have loads of kids and require them to get their husband’s permission while at the same time forcibly sterilising legions of native and black women.
Now imagine you’re an “objective” racist psychologist who decides that slaves wanting to escape is a psychological disorder called “drapetomania” and the “cure” for that is lashings and cutting off toes.
Now imagine that you’re the “objective” and “scientific” medical establishment that deems queerness a disorder and decides that electroshock treatments or lobotomies are the effective solution or feels the need to “intervene” by surgically altering the bodies of intersex infants to fit your perceptions of what genitalia should look like.
Religion has done a lot of fucked up shit. But I’m sick and tired of people acting like SCIENCE hasn’t been involved in wars, death, and genocide either. And it’s the assumptive bullshit notion that ALL religions are somehow stupid and not worth your consideration that perpetuates this colonialist bullshit approach that white people have now upon Native and other individuals when tribes fight for the right to their sacred lands of, “Oh you’re religion is just hooey!”
First they “civilised” us with religion and now it’s science and repatriation. Stealing native lands and native artefacts and native bodies FOR SCIENCE so you can profit off of them.
If you’re going to lay in on the death religion causes, IMO you better realise that there’s a difference between the bastion of white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy that is modern Christianity and other religions which have little in the way of social power in comparison. AND you better recognise that science can be just another extention of white supremacist cisheteropartiarchy too and FURTHER the goals of that power structure rather than being as “objective” as they claim and countering it.
Haha. Imagine that.
Also, Ricky Gervais is a jerk.
THE COMMENTARYY
perfect commentary is perfect
(via sanityscraps)
06 4 / 2013
"FEMEN needs to recognize that Muslim women do in fact have agency, and the idea that Muslim women are helpless, passively indoctrinated by the alleged evils of Islam, and desperately need of Western feminist help is oppressive and orientalist. Patriarchy is not specific to Islam — although there are inarguably extreme and truly saddening examples of misogyny in the Muslim community, patriarchy is a global issue. Furthermore, feminism is not only a Western institution — to assume that Muslim women need someone to “speak for” them is insulting to all the grassroots political organizing and activism that Muslim feminists have done. It’s disturbing how a the rhetoric of “women’s liberation” has been co-opted to justify aggression, violence, and prejudice against Muslim communities. In what way is it appropriate to “rescue” women by indulging in and re-circulating essentializing, stereotyped, and offensive depictions of their culture?"
Muslim women shockingly not grateful for topless European women trying to “save” them (via insaniyat)
also islamic feminism has been a thing since like the 600s, look it up. ps. do you know what european women were doing in the 600s? not being as badass as muslim feminists, that’s for sure.
(via warcrimenancydrew)
(via tal9000)
05 4 / 2013
Racism 101: Are you a Racist?: If you're white, the "Justice" system should terrify you
The lie of the “Justice” system is that it’s there to protect white people. This is a fallacy. One that will one day, sooner rather than later, come back to haunt you. The “Justice” system is there, not to protect white people but to protect white people from being punished. (In addition to…
05 4 / 2013
Femen activists hold up protest signs in front of the Ahmadiyya-Moschee in Berlin, on April 4, 2013.
This is really interesting
no it’s racist af
This is gross and extremely disrespectful, do they realize they are making a place of worship extremely uncomfortable for both muslim men and women? Either way they don’t care because Muslim women truly aren’t their concern, and if they were they’d listen to what they have to say. Instead they insist on asserting themselves as our “saviors” while simultaneously taking our voices away and perpetuating xenophobic and islamaphobic attitudes to Muslim women around the world. They are insisting that no Muslim woman is Muslim or covers by choice when doing this, they don’t consider most Muslim women at all yet they have the audacity to call themselves “feminists”
it bugs me a lot when people disrespect religion so openly—and these women claim to liberate them
this is so wrong and i dont like it at all
lol if i saw these people near a mosque i’d laugh so hard at them
“Don’t worry, oppressed third world women! We white feminists are here to save you!” -__-
(via righteouspussypower)
02 4 / 2013
"A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that’s considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer."
Patricia Hill Collins (via ellomaria)
Ha this is so relevant to people at my college who win “service awards” for tutoring a child a few hours a week versus people who live and work in those communities who don’t win them
(via wretchedoftheearth)
THIS
(via lasiguanaba)
Why I had to stop volunteering at the poor neighborhood in the city my school is based in. The people in my school went into these places to look like cool volunteers. Then there was me, a person who looked, spoke, and appeared to be just like them.
I saw how I wanted to see what these kids and their parents wanted us to help with, and how those coming from more privileged facets of society, were inclined to assume their own ideas of what the kids needed.
(via gelopanda)
(via triguenaista)
26 3 / 2013
Stereotyping and the Whitewashing of POC acting parts? Yep
So basically, this happened to me yesterday.
A white man told me to give him ‘spice’, ‘attitude’ and ‘street’ during my audition.
And it makes me ache.I am FUCKING DYING! “I need you to be Blacker………..”
When she started doing Oprah I fell the fuck out! and the end is so true!
i wanted to find this funny but instead it just made me sad at how true it is
(Source: phoenix-falls, via krissycupcake)
17 3 / 2013
[TW: RAPE]
- 1: Omg those barbarians are out of control! Look at us, we're so ahead of the times!
- 2: Omg look at the lives we're ruining by convicting these 16 year old rapists!
28 2 / 2013
Fantastic article
Found this while looking for resources for the group I’m starting at my internship. I hate the term “tolerance” but the article itself has some good stuff in it.
20 2 / 2013
Sports Illustrated accused of using locals as ethnic props in their Swimsuit Issue. Not cool bro. Though fun fact, I played a Japanese extra in Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift.
What. The. Fuck.
Let me guess… “Its helping to bring needed attention to their culture?”
…
19 2 / 2013
White Girl Privilege and the Problem with Blaming All Men
Super thought-provoking article.
30 9 / 2012
Top Ten Differences Between White Terrorists and Others
1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”
2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.
3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.
4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.
5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.
6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.
7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.
8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.
9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.
10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.
(Source: faineemae, via )
