“What do you think is your biggest weakness?”
“Probably my accent.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because people make fun of me. I am from the Dominican Republic. I’ve only been here three years.”
“Can you remember the most hurtful thing somebody has said to you?”
“No. Because it happens all the time.”
(via thecouscousqueen)
The Space Traders
Science fiction written by Derrick Bell
American land has been polluted to the point of no return. Aliens have come down and offered to fix everything in exchange for every single Black American in the country.
And the most horrifying part about this is: If it were to ever happen, the entire of America would do some shit like this without hesiation
i HATED the sequel to this story tho. Like, i know the principle of the devil you know? But.. THEY JUST SOLD YOU ALL TO ALIENS. HOW DO YOU THINK ITS GONNA GO????
There’s a fuckin sequel?
*shudders*
the african americans are offered a choice by the aliens
If this shit happened in real life it would probably be a plan by the aliens to help us out cause they seeing how we treated like shit around the world and want to help us.
And America would sell us out in a heartbeat to fix they problems and society in this country would crumble in less then a month, cause we not only built this country but we also are keeping it from collapsing. I mean look at where everyone gets their entertainment from, they get it from us, all they do is copy what we do and then reword/remake it and call it their own. How long do you think they would survive without us or our support, you lose the black people here and that’s a big ass chunk of money gone from the USA.
They probably do some shit like try to go to war with the aliens to get us back and save us from being “enslaved again” while we just sitting back looking pretty and kicking it with the Aliens sharing culture and shit with beings that actually respect and getting kick ass technology.
(via searchingforknowledge)
Iran Sentences Actress Marzieh Vafamehr To 90 Lashes For Movie Role
Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to 90 lashes for her role in the 2009 Australian film My Tehran for Sale. The actress, who was arrested in July and sentenced by the court this past weekend, appeared in the movie without a headscarf on and a shaved head, and the story involved both drug use and an observation of Iran’s oppressive ways.
In a cruel twist of irony, Vafamehr played the lead in the film, also named Marzieh, an actress in Tehran whose theatre work is banned by the government, forcing her to lead a secret life in order to pursue her passions. One night she meets a fellow Iranian named Saman who now resides in Australia and offers her a chance to also escape the everyday fears of being who you want to be that come with living there.
cing, saying “In an outcome that could have been lifted from the pages of the movie’s script…the film’s lead actress, Marzieh Vafamehr, was arrested in July and received her sentence at the weekend, according to reports quoting Iranian opposition website kalameh.com.”
Director Granaz Moussavi had no response to the situation, as he is respecting the wishes of Vafamehr’s family.
(via lovelinguist)
![muslim-unicorn:
On National Coming Out Day, Thursday, October 11th, 2012, a coalition of South Asian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) organizations and individuals in the U.S. will launch DeQH, the first South Asian LGBTQ national helpline. DeQH offers free, confidential, culturally sensitive peer support, information and resources by telephone for LGBTQ South Asian individuals, families and friends around the globe. The intent is to provide a safe and supportive ear for callers to share their concerns, questions, struggles or hopes through conversations with trained LGBTQ South Asian Peer Support Volunteers.
Callers can reach the helpline at (908) FOR-DEQH (908-367-3374), 8pm-10pm on Thursdays and Sundays, Eastern Standard Time [5-7pm PST]. Days and times will expand over time.
For general information, check out www.deqh.org and contact deqh.info@gmail.com.
DeQH is a collaboration of South Asian LGBTQ groups and individuals around the nation including AQUA North Carolina, Hotpot! in Philadelphia, SALGA NYC, Satrang in LA, and Trikone San Francisco. Please contact us if your group is interested in joining our effort, and/or if you are interested in becoming a general volunteer or would like to be trained as a peer support volunteer.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbpz1jvAZg1rpm10uo1_500.jpg)
On National Coming Out Day, Thursday, October 11th, 2012, a coalition of South Asian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) organizations and individuals in the U.S. will launch DeQH, the first South Asian LGBTQ national helpline. DeQH offers free, confidential, culturally sensitive peer support, information and resources by telephone for LGBTQ South Asian individuals, families and friends around the globe. The intent is to provide a safe and supportive ear for callers to share their concerns, questions, struggles or hopes through conversations with trained LGBTQ South Asian Peer Support Volunteers.
Callers can reach the helpline at (908) FOR-DEQH (908-367-3374), 8pm-10pm on Thursdays and Sundays, Eastern Standard Time [5-7pm PST]. Days and times will expand over time.
For general information, check out www.deqh.org and contact deqh.info@gmail.com.
DeQH is a collaboration of South Asian LGBTQ groups and individuals around the nation including AQUA North Carolina, Hotpot! in Philadelphia, SALGA NYC, Satrang in LA, and Trikone San Francisco. Please contact us if your group is interested in joining our effort, and/or if you are interested in becoming a general volunteer or would like to be trained as a peer support volunteer.
i would like to take a moment to thank nani pelekai for being one of the first disney women to ever look like an actual human being
thighsssssssssssssssss
calvesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
bothhhhhhhhhhhhhh
(Source: sydneymilkcarton)
A show about a LATINA teenager living her life like it’s ALL the way fucking golden going to school in a REALISTIC version of New York City with REALISTIC portrayals of black, white, asian, and latino students going to school together like….can we just have a moment?
(via searchingforknowledge)
It is a problem when religious symbols become widespread and therefore lose their religious significance. But the fear of dilution isn’t really an issue here — the bindi has lost whatever religious significance it once had to Hindus some time ago, and is now used mostly for decoration. Madonna and Gwen Stefani didn’t turn the bindi into a fashion statement when they adopted it in the 90s — we desi women already did so years before that.
What makes the non-South Asian person’s use of the bindi problematic is the fact that a pop star like Selena Gomez wearing one is guaranteed to be better received than I would if I were to step out of the house rocking a dot on my forehead. On her, it’s a bold new look; on me, it’s a symbol of my failure to assimilate. On her, it’s unquestionably cool; on me, it’s yet another marker of my Otherness, another thing that makes me different from other American girls. If the use of the bindi by mainstream pop stars made it easier for South Asian women to wear it, I’d be all for its proliferation — but it doesn’t. They lend the bindi an aura of cool that a desi woman simply can’t compete with, often with the privilege of automatic acceptance in a society when many non-white women must fight for it.
I understand being a little flummoxed at the rage that the bindi issue inspires in our community. The anger always seems disproportionate to the crime. But will I celebrate the “mainstreaming” of a South Asian fashion item? Nope. Not when the mainstream doesn’t accept the people who created it.
—Jaya Bedi, Beyond Bindis: Why Cultural Appropriation Matters, May 10, 2013 (via androphilia)
(via ileftmyhijabintokyo)
—
Can we have a real conversation about civil liberties now that the government is spying on white people too? (via azspot)
I think we know the answer to that.
(via dendroica)
(via randomactsofchaos)
obviously had to share this!
The Sidis are a small community of Indians of African descent.
Photographer Ketaki Sheth has documented their lives for a new book, A Certain Grace: The Sidi - Indians of African Descent, published by Delhi-based gallery Photoink.
It is estimated that 60,000 to 75,000 Sidis live in the western state of Gujarat and the southern state of Karnataka. Fewer numbers live in the state of Goa and in the cities of Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Their ancestors, say historians, were slaves, soldiers, traders, pearl divers and Muslim pilgrims who arrived in India over centuries. A large number of them, they say, also arrived in India as free citizens.
Historian Mahmood Mamdani says the ordinary Sidi were descendants of slaves brought by Portuguese down the coast of East Africa, mainly from Mozambique. “The big difference with Atlantic slavery was that hardly any slaves were brought to India to provide cheap labour… Their main attraction was not their cheapness, but their loyalty”, he says.
Ketaki Sheth says the Sidis have lived in India for over half a century. “Except for one or two people I photographed, no-one has visited Africa. The older generation too feel rooted in India,” she says.
“Except for their dance (called Goma, from the Swahili word, ngoma, meaning both drum and dance) and some exorcism rituals which have roots in Africa, they are Indian in language, customs, dress, food and temperament,” says Ms Sheth. The Sidis of Gujarat, for example, speak Gujarati as their mother tongue.
The Sidis are “poor for the most part”, Ms Sheth says. They get some affirmative action benefits from the government as they are classified as “scheduled tribes”, one of India’s most disadvantaged groups.
Mahmood Mamdani says a Sidi elder told him that a girl marrying outside the caste or community is usually thrown out. He said the prohibition on marriage outside the community is more because of “interest than identity”. Outsiders, the Sidis fear, will take advantage of the affirmative action benefits.
“Whenever I asked a Sidi person I met whether they thought of themselves as African or Indian, I inevitably got a quizzical look. What, they seemed to think, was wrong with me: they were of course, Indians,” says Mahmood Mamdani.
—imitation as flattery is getting old, it’s called appropriation, nayyirah waheed (via nayyirahwaheed)
(via amurrrka)
zuky:
1968, Asian American high school students attend the Black Panther Party funeral rally for Bobby Hutton,16 years old BPP member.
Nice pic and clip of history. That year, in 1968, my Mom was a new immigrant to the US from China, but she immediately identified with the Black Panthers struggle against racism and began attending civil rights and anti-war rallies, first in Berkeley and then in Chicago. When I was born in New York in the 1970s, my parents were printing a Chinese language progressive socialist newsletter out of our garage. That’s my Asian American upbringing.
In 2011, 51.1 percent of all foreign-born individuals residing in the United States—and 55 percent of all people obtaining a green card—were women. That same year, women comprised 48 percent of all refugee arrivals, 49 percent of all people granted asylum, and 54 percent of all people who naturalized to become U.S. citizens.
Next to a photograph of a maid holding a white baby girl whose lips are pressed to the woman’s forehead, the caption says: “Servants are not forbidden to love. Woman holding child said, ‘I love this child, though she’ll grow up to treat me just like her mother does.’ ”
Ph: Ernest Cole
The middle two photographs remind me of Zakes Mda’s novel The Madonna of Excelsior.
![sikssaapo-p:
[Photo: Native American rancher, Raymond Yellow Thunder, in 1972 was attacked by racists, stripped from the waste down, and forced into an American Legion bar where people made fun of him, forced him to dance, and put cigarettes out on him. Raymond was then taken out back, beaten nearly to his death, and stuffed into the trunk of a car where he died. Before AIM became involved, two of the white murderers of Raymond Yellow Thunder, Melvin and Leslie Hare, were charged with assault and battery and released without even needing to pay bail.]
-op-](http://25.media.tumblr.com/81343c7c021abbfdf8e937b76292e9c4/tumblr_mo1y5xm0Fz1qm6o09o1_400.jpg)
[Photo: Native American rancher, Raymond Yellow Thunder, in 1972 was attacked by racists, stripped from the waste down, and forced into an American Legion bar where people made fun of him, forced him to dance, and put cigarettes out on him. Raymond was then taken out back, beaten nearly to his death, and stuffed into the trunk of a car where he died. Before AIM became involved, two of the white murderers of Raymond Yellow Thunder, Melvin and Leslie Hare, were charged with assault and battery and released without even needing to pay bail.]
(via reclaimingthenativetag)
I am posting on behalf of my friend Vila whose parents (just like mine) has survived the Khmer Rouge. This is the genocide of 1970’s in Cambodia. I wish I can find words to describe how breathtaking this project is. So far he has a few sections of the documentary here. (http://vimeo.com/vilachheang)
Unfortunately, Vila needs more money to be able to finish the whole documentary.
To donate please go here. (http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/project-remembering-home)
If you are unable to donate please share this post on your Facebooks, Tumblrs, Twitters, and so forth. This would mean a lot to Vila and the Cambodian community.Please help keep the stories of our history alive.
Emily Tanica T.
(via searchingforknowledge)
