Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Some great advice from Facebook user Paul O’Connor who might make you think how to handle a potentially dangerous situation differently than a straight on confrontation or silently ignoring it. Good advice on what to do when you find yourself near a racist mouthy twat who is spouting out their crap at some unfortunate person. …
Good advice on what to do when you find yourself near a racist mouthy twat who is spouting out their crap at some unfortunate person.
NEVER engage the perpetrator. He (and it is usually he) is looking for confrontation. Instead speak to the person he is abusing. Say hello. Introduce yourself. Shake his or her hand. And just stand with them. Keep talking. About anything. Weather. Bus schedules. Football. This kind of bullying never works against a group of people having a conversation. Usually a single person travelling or a mom with a kid or maximum, two women are targeted.
Form a group of people with and around them if you can. Don’t tell them they are not alone. Just don’t let them be alone. I speak from experience. Once, I encountered a young girl wearing a hijab being abused as a terrorist by a drunk man on a train. I just went and sat beside her and started a conversation with her. After a while, the dude lost interest. I had a lovely chat with a young student from Qatar. She wanted to study literature while her dad was only prepared to pay for engineering or commerce as he wanted her to join the family business. It helped her feel safe and it expanded my horizons.
This is known in behavioral psychology as “non-complimentary behavior”; by not fueling the aggression of another person and you can flip the whole script of all their expectations, and without any footholds for their aggression (like direct provocation and confrontation/conflict) to launch into further tirades against, the aggressor can’t continue their angry scene-building. The more people who participate in script-flipping, the more successful it gets, as in this post you see with the advice to form a protective group between the bigot and their target for that very purpose.
There’s an NPR podcast called Invisibilia which goes into detail about how it works and what sort of people rely on it everyday professionally and for survival alike, in their Flipping the Script episode.
Earlier my husband and I were driving around looking for Pokemon and we found ourselves in a nice neighborhood surrounding a lake and we could see there was a ton of really good Pokemon close by the water. So I ask him if he wants to get out and walk around and he’s like ‘uuh I don’t think so.’ And he points to this lady just standing by her mailbox staring at us with literal sparks coming out of her eyes. And that’s when I realize that my black husband is too worried that walking around in a white neighborhood looking for Pokemon might cost him his life. And if you’re a white person and don’t think that something is wrong with that then something is wrong with you. Also if you have any black children in your family please talk to them and make sure they’re safe when playing this game. It’s scary out there.
honestly i am so fucking enraged right now that i’ve been angry-crying on and off for the past 2 hours
you don’t have to like the movie, you don’t have to think it was good, you don’t have to like the actors in it, you can have valid criticisms of it and that’s all fine but like
deliberately starting a twitter campaign to explicitly harass a black woman and bombard her with racist, sexist imagery and words is just so - i don’t even have words for how fucking upsetting i find this
all leslie jones did was act in a movie and enjoy herself while doing it
she didn’t do anything wrong and it breaks my heart to know that she signed off last night literally in tears and feeling defeated because disgusting, hateful men didn’t want her to have this; they wanted to take it away from her
i hope leslie knows that they can’t take this away from her
she did what they will never do, and that is be successful
In a viral video watched by 20 million Facebook users and counting,
anti-racism educator Jane Elliott asks her audience a question that gets
to the root of systematic racism in America.
Elliott asks all
white people in her audience to stand if they “would be happy to be
treated as this society in general treats our black citizens.”
The video shares some blank stares from the white audience members as a hush falls over the crowd.
Elliott comments harshly, “You didn’t understand the directions,” and she repeats the question.
“Nobody
is standing here,” Elliott says. “That says very plainly that you know
what’s happening? You know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why
you’re so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen to others.”
It’s
a poignant teachable moment for those who haven’t considered empathy as
a response to the injustices people of color suffer.
The clip has
been circulating widely since last week’s resurgence of Black Lives
Matter protests around the country. There have been many cringe-worthy and ignorantresponsesquestioningwhy black lives matter as opposed to “all lives mattering.” This clip is the perfect response.
“The roots of the problems we saw this week date back not just decades, date back centuries. There are cultural issues, and there are issues of race in this country, and poverty, and a whole range of problems that will not be solved overnight. But what we can do is to set up the kinds of respectful conversations that we’ve had here—not just in Washington, but around the country—so that we institutionalize a process of continually getting better, and holding ourselves accountable, and holding ourselves responsible for getting better.” —President Obama after meeting with police chiefs, elected officials, and community advocates at the White House
these last studies about racism, aging, and birth outcomes are the ones that convinced that nothing has in truth changed or improved. if i can become wealthy and racism still destroy me or my family from stress alone there is no point in improving upon the existing structure it simply must be torn down and rebuilt.
So far, in the wake of Castile’s death, the NRA has been silent about the importance of the second amendment. That’s not unusual. While the NRA advocates passionately for Americans’ right to own guns, it has historically — and hypocritically — remained silent when black men, armed and unarmed, are killed by police. One reporter was able to get the NRA on the phone today.
