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“Going “Native” is shaped by and refigures another phenomenon as well: the completion of the military conquest of Native Americans. Throughout the twentieth century, this event (or, more accurately, this series of events concluding in North America in the late nineteenth century) has also proved a source of collective anxiety, as persistent denials of the nature of American history attest. Going native constitutes a series of cultural rituals that express and symbolically resole this anxiety about the nation’s violent origins. At the same time, however, forms of going native reflect the changing relationship of the dominant, colonizing culture to Native America in the twentieth century. …. conquest did not end with white America’s military triumph. Rather, through out the twentieth century, white America has repeatedly enacted rites of conquest to confirm and extend its power over Native America, and these racial dynamics continue to shape contemporary American life. This power has taken a variety of forms. Whereas Native land and resources have long comprised the primary objects of the dominant culture’s desires, more recently, Native cultures and even identities have provided newer domains of conquest. Changing forms of going native map these transitions and link these events to better-known expressions of colonialism. Furthermore, going native articulates and supports other forms of imperial, gender, and racial domination within the broader American culture as well.”

—Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination  (via adailyriot)

(Source: rematiration, via genderbitch)

{ the houston zoo’s “the african forest” exhibit }

Shannon Joyce Prince’s “Human Zoos, Conservation Refugees, and the Houston Zoo’s The African Forest”, from last year (comments don’t seem as bad as I thought they’d be, although skimming them I did see one apologist and one use of an ableist slur):

The Houston Zoo has proudly announced a new project, The African Forest, which is set to open December 2010 if we don’t halt it.  According to the Zoo’s website, The African Forest is not just about exhibiting “magnificent wildlife and beautiful habitats.  It’s about people, and the wonderful, rich cultures that we all can share.”  Actually, The African Forest is about exhibiting and teaching inaccurate Western conceptions of African indigenous cultures in a place designed to exhibit and teach about animals.  The African Forest is also about displacement in the name of conservation.

Fairs, exhibitions, and zoos that showcase, market, or teach about Africans and other non-white peoples as though they were animals are called “human zoos.” Only non-whites are exhibited as or alongside animals. Human zoos allowed and still allow targeted non-whites to be redefined as animals in Western, European, or First World spaces in order to justify white past, current, or planned mistreatment of non-white peoples in the non-white peoples’ homelands.

…

(essay originally seen on stuffwhitepeopledo but I don’t trust that site anymore)

Anyway, so this was last year.  The exhibit is now open.  I dunno if it’s too late to sign the petition but it can’t hurt to try.  And it’s certainly not too late to contact the zoo.  Here’s the web page for the exhibit at the Houston Zoo’s website, and here’s the zoo’s contact page.

Some more background info on the zoo and protest actions taken against the exhibit (comments section has some bad ones though).

Thread about it on zoochat — mostly really awful and full of racist apologist fail.

(I really regret not signal-boosting Prince’s essay earlier (like, I dunno, LAST YEAR) but I kept getting sidetracked.)

{ I Live In A Remote Hamlet And My Father Has Less Cows Than Your Father. }

jaded16india:

There is a way of reporting dusty news to arouse utmost sympathy. This method is so universal that dusty peepal use it too*: 

  • Talk about cows goat sheep ram mice and how someone has more animals than the person you’re discussing.
  • Talk about how squatting in this ditch is worse than say, That One; use pictures and say That One has more leg-room. This means peepals squatting in That One are less oppressed. This is also how you measure two forms of oppression, just fyi
  • Talk about Remote Hamlet and how far from Civilisation It Is, this way nice imperial person can drool-dream about saving Remote Hamlet while sitting in the Center Of Civilisation.
  • The Remote Hamlet should have at least one villain who wants to eat peepals for lunch or something. Otherwise no one will be interested in knowing about Remote Hamlet peeps.  

———

This is a seriously triggering interview with a rape survivor in the Times Of India which used the word ‘Hamlet’ instead of ‘village’ or ‘town’ that got me thinking about misrepresentation. I suggest not looking at this interview if victim-blaming triggers you. I had to wait about 11 hours before I could open that link and I was still shivering so a fair warning. 

(via oncejadedtwicesnarked-deactivat)

{ LINK: badparsiqueer: "No Country for Strangers" by ephemere (*warning* for a couple of ableist terms) }

badparsiqueer:

“So (and I address this now to the theoretical audience of those on the other, privileged end of the inequality) if you, as a white person, are afraid of writing about us: then be afraid. Carry in your heart the fear of doing further injustice to a people into whose blood oppression has become so incorporated that our institutions and our media echo with the dual strains of self-loathing and adulation for those who are not us. Live with the anxiety of questioning your assumptions about a people that is not more American than America, not a race composed only of tourist guides and call-center agents and overseas foreign workers and shoe-crazy society matrons and celebrity politicians, not your “little brown brothers and sisters”; whose richness and diversity and pursuit of individual identity all too often escape the surface view to which most observers are confined. Confront your blind spots and your privilege in having the luxury of overlooking this inequality because you aren’t disenfranchised by it. Cast away the viewpoints that tag our similarities as proof of the good points of the Philippines and relegate our differences to the status of “disadvantage” or “compensation for…” in those instances when you do choose to acknowledge that we aren’t “just like you”. Grasp the difficulty that comes with having to ask yourself whether you are condescending, whether you are offending beliefs that are not held without reason, whether you are perpetuating a mindset that plays at well-intentioned assistance while diminishing fundamental freedoms to choose our own goods. We’ve had ‘well-intentioned assistance’; the Americans called it benevolent rule. Delve into our history, the blood of our politics and our wars; soak yourself in it, in the grit and the grime of our daily living, until you understand why we rage and why we have cut out our tongues.”

—

“No Country for Strangers” by ephemere

This is the article that I was paraphrasing from, and as you can see, it does such a better job than I ever could. IT IS AMAZING. Read the whole article, and if you want a sense of the context, read the article it is rebutting, which is Charles Tan’s “No Foreigners Allowed”, which is an infuriating article.

(via badparsiqueer-deactivated201110)

{ My Quota Of Teh Reverse-Racism Is Done Today }

jaded16india:

I wrote at the Feminist Hub today. Thought of cross-posting it here too, in case this person wants to carry on the douchefuckery and I need proof! Lesson: Don’t Challenge Dusty Ladies About Orientalism. You will never win. Not even if you give good food for free. 

——

Embrace the faceless, the unnamed.: thefeministhub: Embrace the faceless, the unnamed.: Next on the…

thefeministhub:

Original post was too long. So I’ve cut the commentary.

I swear, sometimes people will actively look for reasons to trash someone. Cut the shit.

The line, “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen,” has absolutely no transphobic implications unless you are literally digging them out. In fact, it could actually be seen as a simple play on words in favor of drag queens. Stop making conflict out of what isn’t there.

The derail on the term, “orient”.. One, it’s a word. A vocabulary word with no traditional (or modern for that matter) pejorative implications. It’s a term derived from the rise of the sun to refer to the east. While it may not be common or politically accurate, it’s not demeaning nor racist, and, as you mentioned, it fits the rhyme scheme..no harm done.

And if you’re honestly telling someone that they can’t speak out for others simply because they are a wealthy, privileged individual, I’m sure there are MANY issues you should kindly shut up about yourself. Fact of the matter, when you’re in the public eye you have the ability to inspire others with a message, and her message is to be proud of who you are, despite your struggles. I see NO implication of her knowing what each and every individual is going through, and I doubt she would ever make that claim. She’s trying to speak to a broad audience, she’s trying to help others be proud of themselves, she’s trying to make a difference.

She’s trying. And I’m damn sure it’s working. And that’s a hell of a lot more than I can say about a lot of people in the public eye, or people in general.

So, take your pin-holed and extorted remarks and shove them down a hole. How dare you shame someone trying to make a difference, especially with a primary reason being simply because they’re in a position to do so. Sure, she has money. She has fame. Give me money and I’m still the same person. I’m gay, I’ve been sexually abused, my dad committed suicide, my mom has been to jail, I’ve been threatened with death. If I’m put in the public eye, does my so-called privilege discount what I’ve been through? Are you in a position to tell me what I can and can’t speak on because of what I have? No.

But you know what? She’s not speaking on the behalf of anyone, she’s speaking TO people. To people who may need it. So calm your angst-ridden arrogant self, listen to music with lyrics that you don’t forcibly misconstrue to offend you, and talk about real issues that actually matter.

Thanks.

Huh. Your post is so much full of epicphail that I was facepalming for a quite a while without knowing quite why, just muttering several exotic swears to myself till I realised I was having a severe ghastly allergy to your privilege. Let’s dismantle the nincompoopism, shall we?

  • You’re saying “Don’t be a drag, be a queen” isn’t problematic and it’s just us silly pesky feminists and other social justice activists who had a problem with the line. It’s not lyke it’s telling trans peeps how to behave in the most douchefucketty patronising way ever, or is again policing or normalising ‘one kind of trans*’ body/action over another. Soree, this must be our flawed perception and the idea of civil respect getting in the way.
  • Orient is a word. So is douchefuck. And so is Colonialism. See a pattern here? I’ll be clear: When one uses the word Orient without quotes, or without a punch of irony, that means you are not being sarcastic and you mean it when you say Orient. And it’s not just “a term derived from the rise of the sun to refer to the east.”. Heard of that pesky leetal things like colonialism? You know that blotch in history where some white peeps decided to hang out in my country for some 200+ years and did some notverynice things lyke raping, plundering and exploiting us in any way they could? So when a dusty lady lyke me hears this term EVEN WHEN IT RHYMES, I explode in rage, so hard that my internal organs melt at the same tyme and cause a dust-storm.
  • Okay, tyme for a leetal lesson in Tokenism: You drop names and then don’t do shit. Lyke someone may say, “See I have a friend who squats delligently in the ditches everyday! This means I am a nice person because who else would be-friend a ditch-squatting person, no?”. Here you can substitute any race-ethnic and/or sexual minority in the way white privileged peeps lyke Lady Gaga do and then you drop names and ethnicities and brag saying “Oh look at me! I am so liberal and shit!”. Meanwhile peeps who do get appropriated are stewing but no one cares about that because “those damn buggers are always angry”, no?
  • “At least she’s trying”, that excuse died the moment it was born, just for fyi and other side-side info.
  • I’m sorry you went through that crap. I honestly am, no one should be put through that crap. No one is saying that people with privileges speak up or out. The more peepal advocating for social justice, the better. BUT, saying transphobic, colonial-empire-hugging shit lyke this doesn’t and will never go without critique.
  • And the last thing? Gaga isn’t speaking TO peepal. She’s speaking OF and FOR minorities, in the worst way possible. So no, no love from me. 

~ Jaded

No, I’m saying it is a problem if you turn it into one. As a song, it is actually pretty harmless, lyrics and all. I understand that GaGa has supposedly used transphobic rhetoric before, but that’s not to say she is a transphobic individual. Her use of lady amongst other things can likely be attributed to ignorance. I’m not going to preach for ignorance being acceptable, because I don’t feel that way in the slightest, but minor ignorance is understandable considering how relatively recent transgender issues are being brought into the public eye.

Gay is also a word. It can be used with pejorative and offensive implications. It can also be used harmlessly amongst peers to signal group affiliation or understanding. eg. “You’re fucking gay.” vs. “Oh, you’re gay?” A term can attain a discriminatory meaning through a variety of ways, the two most prominent and relevant being if the term is invented pejoratively (faggot, nigger), or used in a demeaning way (see previous example). Orient would fall under the classification of the latter. You can not group it with douchefuck because the word fuck was invented as slang with an implication of power over another individual and cultured to be “vulgar”. Orient is not necessarily discriminatory nor is GaGa intending it to be.

Your next point made literally no sense, go attain a dictionary. I’ll attempt to make sense of what you’re saying though. If you are genuinely trying to imply that simply because someone is privileged, that they aren’t able to take a stand for others, you are invalidating all forms of activism and advocacy while making an argument that is ad hominem to begin with. I understand that she has money, that she is white, that she has more luxuries than most of us. But one, that doesn’t discount her own struggles. Two, that doesn’t revoke her ability to speak out for others. The argument of privilege is so overdone and blown out of proportion that I actually find it intolerable at this point. It would be different is she were telling people to just “get over it” or attempting to discount their personal problems. That would - completely understandably - warrant criticism and rage. But that’s not what’s happening. The message of the song is to be proud of who you are, and to be yourself, because that is damned important.

And she is right, it is important to accept who you are and be proud of it, because it is almost always the first step to pushing forward.

Next, I said she’s trying and trying effectively. You are ignorant to think that her efforts are fruitless. And no, the trying argument is not worn out by any means. Could you even begin to imagine the horror of a public figure as big as her speaking for concepts such as tolerance for sexism, racism, and the like? What you have to understand is that she is in fact a human being, who is trying to send a message to (not FOR) others in an effective manner that she is capable of. And her message is a positive one unless you misconstrue it to be otherwise.

Lastly, I’d be astonished if you could give me a reasonable example of her using her so-called privilege to discount others’ struggles and speak for them - invalidate them. In fact, the only use of the word “we” in the song itself was “We are all born superstars,” and I couldn’t agree more, we are all born beautiful with infinite potential, no matter what.

And wow. The privilege denying doesn’t stop! At this point, I don’t know why this even surprises me. Anyway, let’s get into deconstruction the way this poster will understand because it seems my third-world-pride-and-glory of speaking as one does in ditches (which is where I’m from fyi) didn’t become betrosed to this poster’s heart! Never worry. We third world peeps know exactly wattodo in this situation. Just imagine everything I write from now on in an English accent. Not only will my words start making sense, they will sound prettier too. This tried-and-tested method is brought on by 200+ years of colonisation in my country. 

Going to your reply: 

1. Let us imagine a leetal skit. I’ll be the dusty lady in the mud, squatting and then someone comes up to me and says, “I will use your identity to further my popularity and you’ll be okay with it, okay? Okay”. Then this person further goes on to physically hurt me, take my dusty skin away, parade it around and lump it lyke its exotic fruit. And when I say, “I want my skin back! NO! You can’t use it as fruit” I get to hear “It’s only a problem if you make it one”. So when anyone takes my skin away (or appropriates me), and then says I shouldn’t complain, I want to give them my Medusa Glare and use my third worldly powers on them and make them fade away. Gaga has used transphobic rhetoric before too. Notice what I did there? No ‘supposedly’. There are plenty of critiques on her transphobic slurs and subtexts all over the interwebes. Use teh Google. It is magic! Motherpromise. And whether trans* issues are the new in SJ circles or not isn’t the issue here. Considering Gaga’s popularity, she has to be more careful about words she uses. Otherwise it’s going to be a phust number one epicphail.

2. I started literally facepalming here. Are you saying “gay” and “orient” are words that people shouldn’t find offensive if the INTENTION is right? Lesson one: Intention doesn’t fucking matter. Never did. British peeps had “good intentions” and wanted to “humanise the world” too. But they ended up hanging out in more than two-thirds of the world, without an invitation, that too and staying there. From this hanging-out-type fascination thing, comes the word Orient, designed to pornificate dusty peepals lyke me. So, yes, no matter what “intent” this is I’m going to do the reverse-racism and rage. Orient is discriminatory if you look at it from the front center behind side slant look, okay? Okay.

3. I WILL NEVER EVER GO TO A DICTIONARY! You know, I spent most of my formative years squatting in ditches and playing with rabies-infected third worldly dogs. Then when we’d get hungry, we’d eat dictionaries and that’s how I learnt engliss. Now, I want to revert this process. So I will never speak lyke you, okay? Not even when you give me a plate of undiseased food. Some principles stick, no matter what.

4. I never said if you’re not the oppressed minority, you can’t speak up withthem. What Gaga or at least the song’s narrative does is notverynice. It takes names of these peeps, that are of different races or ethnicities, adorns it lyke the exotics necklace culture can obviously be pornificated into and that’s it. Lyke her earlier epic-facepalm-inducing song ‘Alejandro’, this song too talks about a racial minority (you can do the plurals here and say ‘minorities’ if this bothers you too much) through her lens, which is cis-female (as she vehemently asserts!), white and class-privileged. Let’s do teh historyvision for a minute and think when was the last tyme white peeps narrativised other racial or ethnic minorities. O THAT’S RITE. ALL THE FUCKING TYME.

5. I have bigbad issues with “efforts”, we can never know if she’s even making them. What we can see are the “effects” of her songs. And it mainly boils down to appropriation, privilege, prioritising white narratives over others. So no, she’s still not doing anything out of the ordinary.

Also, one thing that I did want to point out is this: Assuming I don’t or can’t write good english — why does this matter anyway? — just because I play around with words is pretty fucking Orientalist of you. AND THIS IS HOW WE USE THE WORD. 

~ Jaded. 

Absolutely awesome epic takedown there.  What an awful person — I hope they learn their lesson, or at least stop bothering you.

(via oncejadedtwicesnarked-deactivat)

{ Real things that my (white) Modern Indian History professor has said }

jaded16india:

haterina:

alliterate:

badparsiqueer:

“Orientalism is demonized today, but you have to admit that they did a lot of good in India.”

What.

WHAT.

Of course they did!  They raped pilandered erased and completely exploited us in every way possible. As a parting gift they left engliss to be my father tongue and then they also left a part of their mindset behind.

So as a dusty mudsquatting ditch inhabitant I want to say FUCK YOU. What? I don’t know why my ‘thank’ reads as ‘fuck’ okay? Okay. 

(via oncejadedtwicesnarked-deactivat)

jaded16india:

My name escapes their minds: hatefulatheist replied to your post: Poverty porn. Sorry I couldn’t…

thejuthikakid:

hatefulatheist replied to your post: Poverty porn.

Sorry I couldn’t find any pictures of white children starving in Haiti to try and make my point, but really? Are we going to just side step any real issue and claim that since a white person puts up a picture with a black child that he’s an asshole?

The real issue is that people EVERYWHERE need help. Africa isn’t the go-to place for poverty neither should any of us be smug and proud about taking a picture of a starving black child and pasting it on a demotivational poster to prove how bad religion is.

I get it. Religion is not helping poverty, but neither is these posters. We’re not side stepping any issue, I’m telling you, as a person of colour, to stop putting up pictures of starving kids in Africa to prove your point about something irrelevant.

People tend to exploit minorities and use pictures and articles for their agenda. Why don’t we ask the person who has been dying of malnutrition what they want instead of defending hate against religion? Let’s actually help them instead of hiding behind a computer and a) dreaming about helping these kids out like missionaries or b) getting angry at religion for not helping kids out.

What Juthika Said. And starving white kids is so not the problem or the ‘issue’ here. And for the last fucking tyme WHAT IS THIS ISSUE you’re talking about? Evangelism? Kids are made to eat Bibles? WHAT? What guarantee that with Bibles there are no food packets? What guarantee that these kids will not reject what they’re being taught?

Oh I know. You don’t assume this Brown Space or Dusty Land — pick whatever makes you feel better — is capable of well, anything at all. It’s just a space for peeps lyke you to hack into and colonise help. Next tyme you want to ‘help’, set a fucking click-through link to organisations who ‘aid’ to ‘change’ the ‘issue’ okay? Okay. 

^flawless victory

(go away, hatefulatheist)

(via oncejadedtwicesnarked-deactivat)

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory: A Primeira Missa no Brasil, 1861 The French-trained Brazilian painter Victor Meirelles painted a romanticized view of the Brazil’s first mass, performed by Portuguese Catholic missionaries in the year 1500. Meirelles’ canvas was the first Brazilian painting to be exhibited at the Salon de Paris. Ironically enough, Meirelles became educated on the history of the indigenous people of Brazil while studying 16th century Brazilian letters and artifacts at the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève in Paris. European-style academic painting dealing specifically with local Brazilian subjects—featuring the nation’s tropical landscape and often incorporating romanticized renditions of the area’s indigenous people —flourished in Brazil in the 19th century, when the Portuguese royal family temporarily relocated to Rio de Janeiro, and continued its rise after Brazilian independence was declared in 1822 by the future Emperor Dom Pedro I, son of King João VI of Portugal. The painting is currently at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

A Primeira Missa no Brasil, 1861

The French-trained Brazilian painter Victor Meirelles painted a romanticized view of the Brazil’s first mass, performed by Portuguese Catholic missionaries in the year 1500. Meirelles’ canvas was the first Brazilian painting to be exhibited at the Salon de Paris. Ironically enough, Meirelles became educated on the history of the indigenous people of Brazil while studying 16th century Brazilian letters and artifacts at the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève in Paris. European-style academic painting dealing specifically with local Brazilian subjects—featuring the nation’s tropical landscape and often incorporating romanticized renditions of the area’s indigenous people —flourished in Brazil in the 19th century, when the Portuguese royal family temporarily relocated to Rio de Janeiro, and continued its rise after Brazilian independence was declared in 1822 by the future Emperor Dom Pedro I, son of King João VI of Portugal.

The painting is currently at the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.

(Source: fylatinamericanhistory)

{ LINK: A far better discussion on issues within the Third World ideology than I started with my history!fail }

genderbitch:

Read it and check out the links too, really good stuff.

{ The Zikist Movement (Nigeria) }

fyeahafrica:

Zikist movement was a radical political group founded in February 1946 by young enthusiastic Nigerian nationalists.

Among its founding members were Nduka Eze, Kola Balogun, Abiodun Aloba, G. Onyeagbula, M.C.K. Ajuluchukwu, M Aina, G. Ebo, J. Inoma, and S. Aderibigbe. In its founding, the group pledged a positive action to defend Nnamdi Azikiwe against attacks by opponents and to take on the repressive nature of colonial rule by seeking its end. The group was multi-ethnic and took some inspiration from Nwafor Orizu writings in his book ‘Without Bitterness’ and in Azikiwe’s own book, Renascent Africa.

Orizu coined the term zikism, a vague term that he describes as not racialism, jingoism, anarchism, monistic nor sarcastic but a social life that strifes to redeem Africa from social wreckage, political servitude and economic impotency.

Between 1948 and 1949, during the movement’s height in popularity, it was able to re-awaken nationalistic political interest among Nigerians at a time of a lull in activity and was partly responsible for the introduction of a new constitution in 1951: the Macpherson Constitution.

The movement was also able to attract dedicated young people who sacrificed their careers for a righteous political cause, among this men were Raji Abdallah, who was let go of his work in the Post and Telegraph and Adesanya Idowu.

via The Nigerian Eagle

(Source: )