What Charlize Theron Doesn’t Get About Black Hollywood

thebaddominicana:

jahanzebjz:

[…]

In Hollywood, where even legendary filmmaker George Lucas had to fight and ultimately use his own money to get an all-black film (Red Tails) made, black actresses still struggle to find quality work. When they do, they are rarely cast as ideals of beauty or objects of desire

[…]

As well meaning as Charlize Theron is, she has no clue what it means to be a dark-skinned African-American woman whose beauty is seldom showcased in national commercials for perfumes or on mega billboards on Sunset Boulevard or even celebrated in the latest video by the hottest rappers

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Ok, but what should be done then? Turn them into objects of desire as well? Are women supposed to be objectified? And is it better and more equal to objectify and Photoshop black women on commercials and billboards just like white women are ? Or should we have some critique about this consumer culture where women are things to owned and made money from instead of human beings with dignified lives? This type feminism is not revolutionary but it’s actually very pro-establishment, and capitalism can easily adapt to that. It does not weaken anything but instead empowers the current structures of the economy and the society. There has to be a wider critique of the institutions, otherwise we will end up embracing the same institutions and all of its tools that generate so many of the problems.

- Jahanzeb Hussain

jahanzeb, while you have a point theres this and also the fact that apparently no one seems to want to grasp that having the entire planet and media tout you as the ugliest most undesirable women on earth over the last 500 years does take a very real psychological toll on black women. that always being made out to be inferior in relation to everyone else is shitty as fuck, and everyone seems to be ok w perpetuating it and agreeing and going “so the fuck what?”. for us sexism comes w an extra blade that is race. even when we win miss universe, you can expect everyone else to be complimented, and crickets for us.

every time black women ask for a bit of humanity everyone jumps in to say we are somehow being irrational for it. to stop being petty. to look at the bigger picture. to fight for anything and everything but themselves.

its not whining to be objectified. its screaming “cant i be human and loved and taken into consideration just as much as anyone else?” —-because being denied womanhood, humanity, access to all kinds of resources across the board come along with being considered “the ugliest, most ratchet and undesirable of all”.

(via karnythia)

my boyfriend took one course in cultural theory and suddenly he’s the expert

According to Leo, Haywire is our equivalent to Rambo, America’s way of coping with the aftermath of being thrown into another futile and losing war and government propoganda during the upcoming elections etc etc etc. Or something. I don’t know. He said it more eloquently. (He’s insightful, my boyfriend.) Maybe I was a little bit too excited watching Gina Carano choke Michael Fassbender to think critically.

Fuck, I made myself sad.

moniquill:

Tell me why, Tumblr.

Tell me why I did a search for ‘Wampanoag Dress’ looking for historical and reconstruction Wampanoag attire and found THIS instead.

Tell me why non-native people think that it is remotely appropriate to dress their children up like this:

And make them choose ‘Indian Names’ (The OP’s child chose the name ‘Creative Spirit’ and the OP thinks that this is just darling).

Tell me why non-native people are still perpetuating the myth of ‘The First Thanksgiving’.

Tell me why Wampanoag people are continuously referred to in the past tense in this post, as if they stopped existing the day after the setting of that myth.Tell me why the OP is flippant and silly and almost proud about her own ignorance:

“The first thing we did was build a wetu. Huh? Yeah, a wetu. Apparently that’s what the wampanoags lived in. This is how my kindergartner described it to me. Silly me, guess I should have known that. I mean who doesn’t know what a wampanoag and a wetu is?”

Tell me why they call this ‘Educational’ and think they’re doing a good thing.

This is how racism starts.

This is how stereotypes are formed in the minds of children.

This is the start of the path that ends with hipsters in war bonnets frolicking in fields half-naked, carrying bottles of booze and getting self-righteously angry (And refusing to learn. And continuing to be angry) when they’re confronted.

When you only speak about Native American people in the past tense, in certain contexts. When you only mention them as pertains to White history. When you depict them in stereotypical ways. This is how it starts.

Depictions like this are hurtful. Dressing up in redface is hurtful. Wearing ‘war paint’ is hurtful. Dressing up as another race by wearing terribly stereotypical caricatures of what you think that race looks like is not appropriate. Teaching your child that this is what they should think of when they hear ‘Native American’ HURTS REAL NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLE. It creates, in the mind of your child, a stereotype, a caricature, of what Native people do/should look like that erases us in reality and removes us from their perception of the modern world. It turns ‘Native American’ into someone wearing beads and headbands and feathers and face paint. It turns an ethnic, racial identity into a costume.

That is not what Wampanoag people -ever- looked like.

THIS is what Wampanoag people looked like in the 1620’s:

THIS is what Wampanoag people look like today when dressed in Regalia for powwow:

And THIS is what we look like when we’re -NOT- dressed for Powwow:

(via karnythia)