hellyesbro:

I hate the suburbs so much it’s unreal bro

theothersarshi:

tanadrin:

I think the whole “expensive useless degrees” thing is another discussion that suffers from American parochialism, because in very many countries university is much cheaper to the student, or virtually free. Seen as a particularly American pathology, like absurdly high healthcare costs, I think it reveals that the terms this discussion is being had on–is a university degree economically worth it to the degree-earner?–is one that’s particular to a specific set of social conditions, not general to all developed societies. Some countries have made the decision that education is valuable enough in itself that it will be heavily subsidized by the state, like healthcare or transportation or scientific research, and the US largely has not, and so the question “should university be vocational training or ars gratia artis“ (which is a false dichotomy anyway) is less important.

Not unimportant–after all, the revenue that goes into subsidizing education has to come from somewhere, and education in other countries has not been immune to budget cuts and fee hikes–but it’s seen as part of a broader political dynamic of what society will prioritize and how, and not as a moral failing of specific individuals, as it being “your fault” if you got a degree and ended up in debt because of it. Which is a weird framing, because cross-culturally–even in the US–education tends to be valued very highly! We recognize it as a crucial mark not only of employability but also respectability and personal development, and traditionally not in a way that emphasizes STEM subjects. Quite the opposite in fact: the historically most respectable forms of education are the least “useful” in that sense, focusing on the classics and theology and similar subjects. And the US has more affordable options for education, like in-state tuition at public universities and community college, but the quality of these options are highly variable, and there are no national public universities.

Much like climate change and healthcare, I’m suspicious that framing the issue as one of personal responsibility is laundering a political problem (the US has set up its society to incentivize an education in almost every single way, and also attached high costs to education) into an individual moral one (if you are unemployed, it is because you chose the wrong degree), even as many people with “practical” university degrees struggle to find jobs in their field. It seems like a specific application of a more general principle that your economic situation is always and only determined by your set of individual choices, which, if that is one’s belief, one should state openly.

Correct me if I am wrong, but looking at US discourse, it often feels to me that the US seems to believe in a superhuman individual whose personal choices are tremendously impactful on the self (affecting health, income, wellbeing), while exonerating larger structures (institutions, systems) of their responsibility.

roach-works:

sketiana:

sketiana:

the BEST THING about America is that one of their timezones is called mountain time. i cannot tell you how funny that is to me. it sure is always time for mountains in one fourth of america

¼ of you guys live like this

take a wild fuckin guess where the mountain time is, my dude

the-marxist-mash:

guerrillatech:

There really is only like 5 cities in the us that actually look like the top pic and even then its like ten blocks of their downtown

unicorn-and-bluebells:

texnessa:

“I want to tell a story about an invisible elephant.

Once upon a time, when I was in graduate school at UCSB, the department of religious studies held a symposium on diasporic religious communities in the United States. Our working definition for religious diaspora that day was, “religious groups from elsewhere now residing as large, cohesive communities in the US.” It was a round table symposium, so any current scholar at the UC who wanted to speak could have a seat at the table. A hunch based on hundreds of years of solid evidence compelled me to show up, in my Badass Academic Indigenous Warrior Auntie finery.

There were around 15-20 scholars at the table, and the audience was maybe fifty people. There was one Black scholar at the table, and two Latinx scholars, one of whom was one of my dissertation advisors. The other was a visiting scholar from Florida, who spoke about the diasporic Santería community in Miami. But everyone else at the table were white scholars, all progressively liberal in their politics, many of whom were my friends. Since there was no pre-written agenda, I listened until everyone else had presented. I learned a tremendous amount about the Jewish diaspora in the US, and about the Yoruba/Orisha/Voudou, Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu communities, and even about a small enclave of Zoroastrians.

As they went on, I realized my hunch had been correct, and I listened to them ignore the elephant, invisible and silent, at that table.

So I decided to help her speak the hell up. “Hello, my name is Julie Cordero. I’m working on my PhD in Ethnobotany, Native American Religious Traditions, and history of global medical traditions. I’d like to talk about the European Catholic and Protestant Christian religious diaspora in the United States, as these are the traditions that have had by far the greatest impact on both the converted and non-converted indigenous inhabitants of this land.”

Total silence. And then several “hot damns” from students and colleagues in the audience. I looked around the table at all the confused white faces. My Latinx advisor slapped his hand on the table and said, “Right!!?? Let’s talk about that, colleagues.”

The Black scholar, who was sitting next to me, started softly laughing. As I went on, detailing the myriad denominations of this European Christian Diaspora, including the Catholic diocese in which I’d been raised and educated, and the brutal and genocidal Catholic and Protestant boarding schools that had horribly traumatized generations of First Nations children, and especially as I touched on how Christians had twisted the message of Christ to try and force people stolen from Africa to accept that their biblically-ordained role was to serve the White Race, her laughs grew more and more bitter.

The Religious Studies department chair, who’d given a brilliant talk on the interplay between Jewish and Muslim communities in Michigan, stopped me at one point, and said, “Julie, I see the point you are so eloquently making, but you’re discussing American religions, not religious diasporic communities.” I referred to the definition of diaspora we had discussed at the start of the discussion, and then said, “No, Clark. If I were here to discuss religions that were not from elsewhere, I’d be discussing the Choctaw Green Corn ceremony, the Karuk Brush Dance, the Big Head ceremonial complex in Northern California, the Lakota Sun Dance, or the Chumash and Tongva Chingichnich ritual complex.”

It got a bit heated for a few moments, as several scholars-without-a-damn-clue tried to argue that we were here to discuss CURRENT religious traditions, not ancient.

Well. I’ll let you use your imagination as to the response from the POC present, which was vigorously backed by the three young First Nations students who were present in the audience (all of whom practice their CURRENT ceremonial traditions). It got the kind of ugly that only happens with people whose self-perception is that they, as liberal scholars of world cultures with lots of POC friends and colleagues, couldn’t possibly be racist.

Our Black colleague stood and left without a word. I very nearly did. But I stayed because of my Auntie role to the Native students in the audience.

I looked around at that circle of hostile faces, and waited for one single white scholar to see how unbelievably racist was this discursive erasure of entire peoples - including my people, on whose homeland UCSB is situated.

Finally, a friend spoke up. “If we are going to adhere to the definition of diaspora outlined here, she is technically correct.”

And then my dear friend, a white scholar of Buddhism: “In Buddhist tradition, the Second Form of Ignorance is the superimposition of that which is false over that which is true. In this case, all of us white scholars are assuming that every people but white Americans are ‘other,’ and that we have no culture, when the underlying fact is that our culture is so dominant that we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking it’s the neutral state of human culture against which all others are foreign. Even the Black people our ancestors abducted and enslaved we treat as somehow more foreign than ourselves. And, most absurdly, the peoples who are indigenous to this land are told that we belong here more than they do.”

People stared at their hands and doodled. The audience was dead quiet.

And you know what happened then? The elephant was no longer invisible, and my colleagues and I were able to have a conversation based on the truths about colonialism and diaspora. We were THEN able to name and discuss the distinctions between colonial settlements and immigrant settlements, and how colonial religious projects have sought to overtake, control, and own land, people, and resources, while immigrant and especially refugee diasporic communities simply seek a home free from persecution.

As we continue this national discussion, it is absolutely key to never, ever let that elephant be invisible or silent. You are on Native Land. Black descendants of human beings abducted from their African homelands are not immigrants. European cultures are just human cultures, among many. And the assignation of moral, cultural, racial superiority of European world views over all non-Euro human cultures is a profound delusion, one that continues to threaten and exterminate all people who oppose it, and even nature itself.

I hope that this story has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.”

- Julie Cordero-Lamb, herbalist & ethnobotanist from the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation

I want this tattooed on my forehead. Fuck dude

padawan-historian:

Today marks the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

The United Nations recognizes that at least 15 million African women, men, non-men, children, and elders were kidnapped and trafficked across the Atlantic world (W. Europe, the Americas, and Caribbean). The founders of the United States and the European leaders of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries are ALL connected to this legacy of state-sanctioned exploitation and dehumanization.

August 22, 1791, marked the start of a series of revolts and slave uprisings led by enslaved and liberated Black and indigenous people, chief among them Sanite Bélair, Catherine Flon, Marie-Louise Coidavid, and Victorian Montou. This event would come to be known as the Haitian Revolution. 🇭🇹

As we continue decolonizing our politics and day-to-day practices, it’s important that we take time to unlearn our miseducation and reclaim our history.