late night conversations

Feb. 19, 2011 at 2:57pm with 13,693 notes

Reblogged from mytongueisforked

sheresists:

robot-heart-politics:

zuky:uatjonc:swagkingg:

this is why i LOVE tumblr, speaks the realest shit.. stop racism ! every girl can be beautiful despite their skin color

to tell you the truth… I don’t know how I feel about this.
Angie [in all her UN Ambassador, adopt-a-foreign-minority baby, millions of dollars to charity goodness] is still white. Her eyes, still blue. She’ll get the role of Cleopatra [an Egyptian] one day and play a British tomb raider the next. She is an “every woman” in Hollywood. racially ambiguous. Color does matter. Because my daughters are going to be “idealized” for their light complexion and “good” hair. Because dark black girls don’t get to take positive leading roles as often as they should. Because characters in media are written as either a default “white” or purposefully ”ethnic”.
Color matters because the media tells my sisters, mothers, and daughters they are not beautiful. they are not worth it. they need to press or weave their hair. they need to lose 20 pounds. they need to have narrower noses. they need to wear hazel contacts.
I understand what this image is trying to say: we’re all human and we’re all beautiful. But it’s saying it the wrong way. Show me three different women, three different colors, three different beauties. THAT’s reality. but this just says to me “Color doesn’t matter… they’re white on the inside”. Frankly, that’s not what I would want my daughters to see.

This image screams “Race doesn’t matter if you’re white”. I won’t even get into the contextualized visual meaning of the right-hand portion of the image. This epitomizes the idealization of colorblind racism: “If we pretend race doesn’t exist, it will magically cease to be a problem, so that people of color can stop talking about racism and we can all agree to idolize whiteness!”

I never stop being surprised by the racist things that [white] people think are not only okay, but actually ANTI-racist.

Attention: “Well Meaning” white folks
Buying into the idea that “Color Does Not Matter” does not make you a radical, anti-racist and progressive person.
More so than anything, it is revealing of your privilege and more importantly, a way in which you are able to maintain your privilege. If you adopt these beliefs, you fail to challenge and recognize the ways in which race and racism continues to be a systemic issue. You deny and invalidate the oppression of others. And basically, falling on these myths again, allows you to maintain your privilege without feeling any guilt.
Colour doesn’t matter to white people because white supremacist culture socializes us to believe that the default colour is white. Whiteness does not have to be named or identified. It is the standard, the normal skin colour.
Folks of colour have known this and will continue to know this.

Everyone has basically said everything I want to say about this. Totally ignoring the problematic racialization of bodies and spaces.

robot-heart-politics:

zuky:uatjonc:swagkingg:

this is why i LOVE tumblr, speaks the realest shit.. stop racism ! every girl can be beautiful despite their skin color

to tell you the truth… I don’t know how I feel about this.

Angie [in all her UN Ambassador, adopt-a-foreign-minority baby, millions of dollars to charity goodness] is still white. Her eyes, still blue. She’ll get the role of Cleopatra [an Egyptian] one day and play a British tomb raider the next. She is an “every woman” in Hollywood. racially ambiguous. Color does matter. Because my daughters are going to be “idealized” for their light complexion and “good” hair. Because dark black girls don’t get to take positive leading roles as often as they should. Because characters in media are written as either a default “white” or purposefully ”ethnic”.

Color matters because the media tells my sisters, mothers, and daughters they are not beautiful. they are not worth it. they need to press or weave their hair. they need to lose 20 pounds. they need to have narrower noses. they need to wear hazel contacts.

I understand what this image is trying to say: we’re all human and we’re all beautiful. But it’s saying it the wrong way. Show me three different women, three different colors, three different beauties. THAT’s reality. but this just says to me “Color doesn’t matter… they’re white on the inside”. Frankly, that’s not what I would want my daughters to see.

This image screams “Race doesn’t matter if you’re white”. I won’t even get into the contextualized visual meaning of the right-hand portion of the image. This epitomizes the idealization of colorblind racism: “If we pretend race doesn’t exist, it will magically cease to be a problem, so that people of color can stop talking about racism and we can all agree to idolize whiteness!”

I never stop being surprised by the racist things that [white] people think are not only okay, but actually ANTI-racist.

Attention: “Well Meaning” white folks

Buying into the idea that “Color Does Not Matter” does not make you a radical, anti-racist and progressive person.

More so than anything, it is revealing of your privilege and more importantly, a way in which you are able to maintain your privilege. If you adopt these beliefs, you fail to challenge and recognize the ways in which race and racism continues to be a systemic issue. You deny and invalidate the oppression of others. And basically, falling on these myths again, allows you to maintain your privilege without feeling any guilt.

Colour doesn’t matter to white people because white supremacist culture socializes us to believe that the default colour is white. Whiteness does not have to be named or identified. It is the standard, the normal skin colour.

Folks of colour have known this and will continue to know this.