I think one of the reasons so little attention is being paid to the famine is because of decades and decades of "starving kids in Africa" messaging.
Westerners see the abject suffering the Sudanese are enduring and subconsciously think that this is normal, that this is the logical condition of an African people.
It is not normal. It is a result of colonialist exploitation. I think that collectively we must do better in not only including but centering African struggles in our activism.
Please note that this post is not an invitation to explain anything to me.
Rather it is a call for action stating that we Westerners must give Sudan, Congo, Haiti (not in Africa) and Ethiopia the attention they deserve rather than tacking them on as footnotes when talking about "the genocide."
If your activism cannot find a way to center Africans for Africans' sake but only seeks to name African struggles as supporting information for Palestine, then it is not liberatory. Period.
It really blows me how, when confronted with their own ignorance, a white person will just plow on through with confidence even to the point of condescension. It's always so jarring
Texas state troopers have been called in (by UT's president? Not sure) for a pro-Palestine student-led protest at UT Austin. There's at least one helicopter flying over campus
16 (and counting) have been arrested. Venmo for bail fund is psc_atx.
There's another action planned tomorrow, a rally for DEI which has been banned in Texas resulting in dozens suddenly unemployed, closings of the multicultural center, women's center, etc.
I won't be surprised if this situation escalates. Praying for protestors' safety.
Wild that colleges are cool with the KKK and confederate flags on campus but not with students expressing solidarity with people experiencing a genocide, and that conservatives are constantly bemoaning their right to free speech when they are in fact the ones curtailing it for others.
I'm going to an action this week (I consider this the bare minimum). If you're an American academic I hope you are too.
Absolutely maddening that
a university with a 40 BILLION dollar endowment (oil money, I think) bends at the knee to an oppressive state government leaving dozens abruptly unemployed and hundreds of students with less support, while using the obfuscating language of "reorganization."
Like at this point if you are involved with an R1 school and you don't know of any political actions happening then you are too disconnected from the material realities of the minds you supposedly enrich.
Being unconcerned at this point is ivory tower-type behavior and that is not something to be proud of.
I also want to be clear, as a disabled person, that physically attending protests and rallies is not the only way you can help and in fact we require people who do other things!
You can be a sign-maker, a phone-banker, a ride-organizer, a mutual-aid facilitor, a meal-bringer, or something else entirely. There are so many ways to show up.
Obviously we know the guy who took out a full-page newspaper ad advocating for the execution of 5 black men would be worse than Biden.
White democrats on here, consider doing something more useful than attempting to lecture black and brown people online by telling them things they already know.
Maybe, just maybe: do the work of understanding why so many people are unmoved on Biden despite the dangers of a Trump presidency instead of arrogantly telling others what their political opinions should be, expecting placid obedience and becoming enraged when you don't receive that.
Perhaps you will come to realize that the status-quo you would like to hold on to so dearly, has been untenable for many for a very long time.
Tennessee withheld billions of dollars from its one public HBCU, Tennessee State, and then tn house voted to oust its entire board and replace it with the governor's picks. Sounds about white
@fulanigirl 100%, and many of them have already been struggling for a while because their state governments (if they are public) purposefully make choices that undercut their chances of success. This has been the case with TSU.
Saw someone (on a different hellsite) say in reference to kopmala kopmala-ing: "this is what you get when you have identity politics without intersectionality or class consciousness" and I really want folk to maybe consider not using words they don't fucking know.
Identity politics, intersectionality, and a myriad of other terms have been dragged through the mud and completely divorced from their black (feminist) origins because people who haven't done the work of understanding (because they feel entitled to help themselves to use black people's and specifically bw's intellectual production) use these words however way they see fit, muddling the original intent + meaning of these words.
"Imposter syndrome" is such a scam because many of the ones who fit the bill as non-imposters often make some of the most milquetoast comments in seminars and what they do say that's worth a damn is quite frequently a regurgitation of what an alleged imposter has already said. Many times repeating something that's just been said, in my experience.
How can I be an imposter if you are using my words? I'm not the first to say this: the term/concept needs to be retooled.
(Context: I'm talking about academia and being a grad student but the concept applies elsewhere including in this digital space 🙃)
I have had so many conversations with women of color who talk about times they've made a point in class that is ignored or dismissed only for someone from a more privileged background (often white, often male) to say the same thing minutes later and recieve positive attention. This is only one example, but it really highlights the point I'm trying to make.