Muhammad Ali on the Vietnam War Draft
Ran across a great book while doing research on racism in the environmental movement.
Black & Brown Faces in America’s Wild Places
Each person interviewed talks about what they do outdoors and when/how they first became attracted to nature. They also discuss their views on (usually) being the only Black/Brown person in a “wild place” and on what they think keeps other people of color from experiencing the wild outdoors (variety of reasons given… poverty, too many responsibilities at home, not wanting to expose themselves to overt racism in small town America, etc.) .
The author of the book is Dudley Edmondson, a Black nature photographer/writer. So yeah.. the book has amazing photographs but also a great message: “Nature without question is for everyone.”
The purpose of the book is to encourage more Black people to discover nature and also for people to quit talking about what we don’t do. We (can) do everything!
I’m a nature enthusiast myself, and I’d love to not be the only Black person for miles and miles all the time. I cannot remember ever having any racist experiences on any of my little adventures… however, people in the book share some unfortunate stories. But, don’t let a fear of racist events stop you from enjoying nature. The land is a part of our culture! It is only in the last hundred years or so that Black people have become urbanized. Before this, we always had a relationship with nature. It’s time to reconnect!
If you’re the first person to show up in the morning, and one of the last people to leave at night; if you bring smiles to hundreds and hundreds of people; if you offer up ideas to the company you work for that end up being huge successes; if you’re always willing to do whatever is in your power to make the people around you happy, YOU TOO can have the oft-ridiculous complaints of a handful of unreasonable people disproportionately affect your employment! Don’t you hate when someone grabs your arm while you’re carrying a lit birthday cake, but DOESN’T complain when you tell them you’ll be right with them?! Or, are you frustrated by men who DON’T lose their shit when you ignore their petulant urge to speak over a woman?! Are you afraid of not being able to go to work in fear because the next complaint you receive, out-of-context and regardless of merit, can mean your termination? Me too! Twinsies!
Kerry Washington being amazing as always.
Understand colorblinders out there. Please get it.
All the applause…
“So I shouldn’t be surprised that the Mother’s Day Parade shooting has largely been forgotten. On Sunday, shots were fired into a crowd during a parade in the New Orleans 7th ward. Police said they saw three suspects running from the scene.
This is the largest mass shooting in the United States where the shooters were still at large after the crime was committed. Think about that for a minute. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Fort Hill to Aurora, all the shooters were either killed or apprehended on site. But the person or people responsible for shooting 19 Americans are still free.”
One of the people who got shot was an antiviolence blogger. Somehow we aren’t seeing massive solidarity for New Orleans or the entire city going on police lockdown to find the perpetrators. Two reasons: 1) This mostly affected Black people, and we all know how much the media and the police give any fucks about Black people in New Orleans; 2) This was a gun crime, so we can’t criticize it because GUNS ARE FREEDOM!
Here is the thing, okay? Coming into a feminist conversation with, “Have you considered that sometimes women acquire free drinks at bars?” is like walking into graduate school during Philosophy finals and saying, “Have you considered that the color blue that I see may not be the color blue that you see?”
Imagine you are the guy who just walked into that Philosophy class and laid that shit down. Imagine the class full of students who have worked very hard and committed themselves and sacrificed to be here, students who have spent several years of their lives learning about this subject. Imagine now their feelings when you go to the head of the classroom with a smirk on your face and demand the professor give you an A for effort. Imagine now that they think you are a douchebag asshole, because they do, and because you are. You are a douchebag asshole because you are obviously so self-centered, arrogant, and completely ignorant of the world around you, that you thought you could walk into a high-level course with no background and no work and say something profoundly simplistic and totally unrelated and also everybody should congratulate you for having done this thing, so brave, so provocative.
[….]
You are not asking us a real question. You are simply illustrating, for all to see, your own ignorance. You are saying, “I have not considered the implications of the question I have just asked. I have not taken the time nor effort nor commitment to sit down and ask myself this question. Instead, I have come into your philosophy classroom/office/feminist blog and shat out my question with a smirk, because I believe that my two seconds of thought are worth more than your long-term analysis, because I believe I am worth more.”
