crosseyedandpainless:

esprit-follet:

varosdailylife:

Interesting news story.

Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

On the number of blacks in the criminal justice system

“Today there are more African-Americans under correctional control — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control. In major American cities today, more than half of working-age African-American men are either under correctional control or branded felons and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.”

Reblogging to listen to later.

miss-education:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

strugglingtobeheard:

soydulcedeleche:

talldarkbishoujo:

karnythia:

paradiscacorbasi:

From someone who really doesn’t quite grasp. 

---

It’s been too long since I regaled you with another dumbed down interpretation of a word you should know, so today’s it! I was inspired to write this after a community meeting last night in which a lady, appropriately named Queen, barked out, “We holding on to what we got. We not gonna let them come gentrify our neighborhoods.” Following my adventure to Rail~Volution last week where I learned that everything I do is for white people, I thought it’d be appropriate to make a little blog post about gentrification.

Gentrification means white people are taking over. They may also be gay, they most likely are myopic little twits, but they most certainly are white.

Dog parks are for white people.

Bike lanes? White people.

Sidewalks? Coffee shops? TOD? All white people!

So apparently only white people ride tricycles pulled by dogs on the sidewalks to the coffee shop for some caffeinated love in a reusable, BPA free mug. (I mean, that’s what dog parks are for, right? Training dogs to pull? I don’t know, I live in Chambodia. We eat dogs.)

Queen went on to talk about how all the white people fled Atlanta to the suburbs and thought those left behind would just die. When they didn’t die, but instead stayed there and thrived, the white people started coming back to take over.

I’ll give her that, but it’s not that simple. Our grandparents and parents moved to the suburbs. They were frightened or driven by some idea of the white picket fence and two acres and better schools or lured by cheaper housing costs or they were just plain nuts, but it was never *my* choice to move out there, I was drug (technically my folks moved out of town to a farm before I was born, but whatever, not my choice.)

But my friends and I? We went studied abroad and learned about livability and transit and went to college and lived in dorms and learned about community and when we graduated we didn’t want those big McMansions in the burbs with yards for kids we wanted dense urban living with transit and the option to not need a car. Know where we found it? In the cities, and in traditionally minority neighborhoods.

Gentrification isn’t about taking over and running out the people who have lived there for years, we just want to be a part of the lifestyle you made and preserved.

You guys did it better than our parents.

So yea, we may move in and do some crazy thing like try to add bike lanes, but that benefits everyone, particularly those that can’t afford cars and have to bike. It’s for everyone’s safety. And that dog park? That raises the property values on your home, too. I know you’ve survived all these years without us and without these stereotypical white amenities (PS, is it so white if there are no bike lanes in the suburbs?) but we just want to integrate ourselves into the community and strengthen it. Don’t blame us for our ancestor’s choices; we want the same things as you, safe streets with lights and transit options and job access and a strong, healthy, community.

Is that so white?

---

Yes, CCTgirl. Yes, it is.

I’d believe this tripe, if gentrification didn’t come with a side of complaining about the icky brown people & their ways & pushing to hike property taxes along with property values, & forcing out small businesses to bring in those same suburban mega stores until those great funky neighborhoods all look the same…just like the suburbs.

I smell some hardcore Special Snowflake Syndrome on that girl. Heh.

The major fallacy in her argument, aside from the great points you made, is the assumption that the ~improvements~ that come with gentrification are meant for everyone. Hint: they aren’t. If they were, they’d have already been there. There’s a reason poor/working class PoC are afraid of gentrification signs. It’s a precursor to getting thrown the fuck out of their neighborhoods.

I mean, this is seriously making me the fuck mad because I’ve been watching it slowly play out over the last couple of years just in one neighborhood. Not the one I live in, but one I’m in about twice a month. See, I’ve been getting my hair done at a shop in Bed-Stuy for the last couple of years, by Fulton & Nostrand over by Restoration Plaza. If peeps aren’t familiar with this area of Brooklyn for some reason, well, it’s the hood. The thing is, it’s adjacent to Fort Greene, which has been gentrified the fuck out, and as these things generally operate in NYC, when one neighborhood gets taken over, the Borg cube always moves to assimilate the next one over (white people who can’t afford the trendy place will go for the next closest place, because it’s cheaper).

It’s been a slow but steady process, but I look at it like time-lapse photography and it’s startling. The most obvious measurement is just numbers. I see more and more white people on the street (hipster ass looking MFers at that) every time I go. The nature of the businesses are changing. Less storefront sanctified churches, more coffee shops (now with free wi-fi!). Carver bank closing, Chase bank coming in. More uniformed police on the streets. Now, we can argue back and forth over whether or not these changes are beneficial; many of them are. But the real question is, why are these changes occurring now, as opposed to 20 years ago, and who are they really benefitting?

Because seriously, the ridiculous thing about gentrification arguments like the one Snowflake-chan was using is the assumption that the playing field is level. “You guys are doing it right!” is fucking ridiculous. “Those guys” did it because they had no other option. Why the fuck do you think the hood looks so run down? It’s not because people don’t care. But when you can’t afford to maintain properties because the city doesn’t fuckin’ care and no bank is willing to invest in your community, how are you going to do it? People around the way don’t give a fuck about “sustainability” and all those white buzzwords because they’ve been making do with nothing because they’ve had no choice. No bank was going to give anyone a loan to tear down tenements and build McMansions on Fulton & Nostrand. The white capitalist power structure is inherently set up so that peeps around the way do not have the same leverage and access to power to demand things that white gentrifiers get as a given. Why are there so many police on Fulton St. now? It’s not to protect the blacks and Latin@s who have suffered crime there for decades. It’s so Hipster Mary doesn’t get her head cracked open and her iPad stolen. And how do you think those cops are going to make sure Hipster Mary stays safe? Heh.

WTF does this simple bitch think happens when property values go up? ~Everybody~ doesn’t win. White people win. Because when property values go up, they start looking at who and what have the potential to bring them down. And guess who the fuck that is.

wah you should be grateful we came to take all your shit and make it more expensive so you can no longer afford it!

this is a small kine “be grateful we colonized you” rant. coz thats all gentrification is anyway. ongoing colonization.

fuck you!!!!!!

Fuck was wrong with the person who wrote that shit anyways? Talldarkbishoujo, you really fucking killed it.

wooooooow that was a load of shit I just read up thar

Bet you five bucks this girl doesn’t see color, either.

(via squeetothegee-deactivated201111)

notyourkinddear:

shnelson46:

“The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released its annual report on hate violence motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV status last week. The report documents 27 anti-LGBT murders in 2010, which is the second highest annual total recorded since 1996. 70 percent of these 27 victims were people of color; 44 percent of them were transgender women.

The study also found that transgender people and people of color are each twice as likely to experience violence or discrimination as non-transgender white people. Transgender people of color are also almost 2.5 times as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers.”

“But why do you make everything about race?” I hear you say…

(via thecuntmentality)