up with people and/or tumblr

I just saw the last half of the documentary Smile Til It Hurts and I thought of you, dearest tumblr.

As Homer once told Lisa, “I understand honey. I used to believe in things when I was  a kid.”

<3

Letters of Note: To My Old Master →

bana05:

perversetoamiracle:

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

This might be the best thing I’ve ever read.

Glory.

This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read.

Tuskegee’s historic love story

Herbert Carter, 94, one of the original 33 Tuskegee Airmen pilots, holds a portrait of his wife, Mildred Hemmon Carter, in her flight uniform. She was the first black female pilot in Alabama and is counted among the history-making Tuskegee Airmen, too. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Married nearly 70 years, the two were known as Tuskegee’s “first couple.”

*flails*

(Source: daughtersofdilla, via gingerberrycat)

First World Art Problems.

havecrayonswilltravel:

My sweet, coming of age story that was supposed to be about a little girl discovering the wonders of British India, magic and growing into herself is morphing into some horror fantasy beast.

WHOOPS.

I need a better resource for Hindu mythology than Wikipediaaaahhhhh.

LOL ‘wonders’ indeed. One wonders why the British are there.

[image: scan from book written in 1912, where the two characters exclaim over how cute it is to call chocolate fudge ‘pickaninny fudge’.]

bossymarmalade:

- The Mary Frances Cookbook, by Jane Eayre Fryer (Philadelphia, 1912)

Please note that at no point in the summary do they mention that the book has racist elements; it’s a “beautiful” book with a “lovely story line” that modern readers should “simply enjoy”.

It never ceases to bemuse me that, as a chromatic woman, white/Western people admire me for voraciously reading old-fashioned books and classic English literature — without understanding how much it costs me every time I digest these references to “heathen Hindoos” or “pickaninnies” or “rat-eating Chinee” and how long it’s taken me to vomit them from my system.

My relationship with white books is so often a mirror of my relationship with white people; I build up a devotion to them, these antique cookbooks and Sherlock Holmes stories and Louisa May Alcott novels, and then as I’m happily reading along I suddenly discover that my admiration is decidedly not mutual and this is what they think of me.  Things are never quite the same after that.

paradiscacorbasi:

“Centuries later, what can Thanksgiving Day mean to Native peoples? Thank you for stealing our land? Thank you for wiping out our people? Thank you for placing a remnant of our once great numbers on rural ghettoes called ‘reservations?’ Thank you for abolishing most of the ancient traditions? Thank you for poisoning what little Indian lands remain with uranium? Thank you for poisoning the lands now inhabited by the whites? Thank you for letting Indians fight in American wars against other people? Thanks. The real tragedy is that millions of Americans don’t know, and don’t want to know about Indian history and traditions. Today, the names of rivers, lakes, and landmarks bear indigenous markers of another age. The people, except for an occasional movie, are mostly forgotten; out of mind. The easier to replace with false images of happy meals, and turkey dinners. Happy Thanksgiving.”

—

Mumia Abu Jamal, “Some Who Feel No Reason for Thanksgiving” (via callhergreen)

To anyone feeling whiny/bitter/’get over it’ from the inconvenience of guilt:

My fam does the whole get-together thing for (Canadian) Thanksgiving - which, btw, is no less of a false image than the American version.  It’s not so much the gathering that is wrong; I mean, people need reasons to gather and eat during winter months in the US and Canada.  I think what’s awful is to pretend that it’s all about a wonderful and idealistic history, instead of being aware of the actual, historical whats and hows, respecting our real past and all the people who were displaced and marginalized in order for us to have this luxury of Thanksgiving.  

Trust me - awareness and respect for other humans does not ’spoil’ the fun of Thanksgiving. The holiday has been whitewashed and it is fake. It needs to be redefined.

crossedwires:

Aishwarya Rai: I thought we got rid of imperialists like you.

Some white dude: I’m not British. I’m an American.

Aishwarya Rai: Exactly.

***

This reminds me of some ‘multicultural’ (ie, mostly white but with one character of colour)/interracial relationship romance books in which the white character is really, really clueless  — like pre-racism 101 — if not outright/deliberately racist (it’s a character flaw! no kidding), and yet we’re supposed to somehow believe they fall in love and live happily ever after. Or like it’s the POC’s job to teach them to be less racist and have endless patience for it. It’s all very white gaze-y.

(Source: areyoulikecheckingmeout)

madlori:

Women firefighters douse flames during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Oh hay look women of colour were an integral part of the ‘cool’ part of history too, how about that.  They were like. Doing stuff that supposedly only heroic white dudes had done. That makes women valid participants in collective history now, right? Right? This is in high school history books now, right? Right? Huh?