14th April 2013
Reblogged From harukami
Notes: 63078
- 70 Percent of Anti-LGBT Murder Victims Are People of Color
- While people of color make up about 30 percent of the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned.
- Report: Immigration Status and Race Affect Domestic Workers’ Pay
- Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders. The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offenders receive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes.
- Marijuana Prohibition Turns 75, Blacks Three Times More Likely to be Arrested Than Whites
- According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime.
- A number of states have bans on people with certain convictions working in domestic health-service industries such as nursing, child care, and home health care—areas in which many poor women and women of color are disproportionately concentrated.
- African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
- The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.
[TW: Rape] Canadian police accused of abusing native women
CNN breaks down the numbers: > Nearly nine out of 10 people “stopped and frisked” under a controversial New York Police Department policy in 2011 were African-American or Hispanic.
The War on Drugs Is Really a War on Minorities
Martin Luther King assassinated by US government: MLK civil trial decision
FIONA GOT A TUMBLR
IT'S GONNA BE FULL OF POLITICS AND FAN ART AND STUPID AWESOME GIFS
SOMETIMES ALL TOGETHER
IT'S GONNA BE FULL OF POLITICS AND FAN ART AND STUPID AWESOME GIFS
SOMETIMES ALL TOGETHER
Please. Please please please read this and reblog!
If you support LGBTQ Rights you need to stop scrolling and read this. This is not a fucking joke.
If you cant read this, here it is:
If you don’t remember Sophie M Herold, she is a German girl, who is extremely homophobic and transphobic. She has found out LGBTQ persons names, addresses, personal info etc. And set up her own database.
Her intentions with this are harmful.
She is sending out this information, your information, your best friends information, someone you love and care about. She’s sending it to hate groups, malicious people, people with bad intentions.
And if you think I’m blowing this out of proportion, people have been kicked out of homes, disowned by families and even MURDERED. Yes, murdered. Innocent people who have done nothing but love.
She has had numerous blogs and each have been removed. Tumblr staff are aware of her, and as far as I’m aware she currently doesn’t have a blog, but this does not mean she isn’t still on peoples tumblrs, asking via anon where you live, what your name is.
An email I received today. She’s sending out information of same sex couples with children so the children can be kidnapped. She entitled it “Time to strike back”. If that doesn’t suggest harmful intentions I don’t know what does.
Please be extremely careful what you post on tumblr, on twitter, facebook, anywhere. Do NOT give out your full name or your address, or even the town in which you live. Look out for one another, and don’t answer any suspicious anons. Especially if they use your name in quotation marks.
Sophie M Herold is still out there, she always will be, so please spead this message and warn people. She’s attacking in silence. We don’t need more people dying because of her actions.========This disgusting excuse of a human being of needs to stop, but the only way it can be stopped is if you spread this! Please, be aware of any suspicious people or anons asking for personal information. It can get you or your loved ones in SERIOUS DANGER. Thank you.SIGNAL BOOST!
SIGNAL BOOST THE FISH OUT OF THIS!
SIGNAL BOOST.
Oh FUCK she’s back. D: Guys, this isn’t a joke. Signal boost the shit out of this.
WHAT
Boosting. No matter what your opinions on homosexuality are, this is despicable.
BOOOOOST!
This is extremely fucked up.
Sharon Henry, a Black lesbian district attorney of San Mateo, walked into a Bank of America and attempted to deposit a check for $27,000 from her domestic partner’s account into hers and withdraw $1,000. The teller looked up a listing for the partner’s name—Kathleen Wilkinson—but it was a different Kathleen Wilkinson than Henry’s partner, and the listing lacked the notation that Sharon Henry was allowed to make the transaction.
The teller called Wilkinson’s family, who stated they didn’t know Henry and the teller called the police. The police, failing to follow protocol, did not call the phone number on the check, and refused to let Henry make the call, put her under arrest. They locked her up and took away her phone and diabetes medication.
Finally, Henry was released two hours later after her partner arrived at the bank wondering where she had gone.
Henry, a prosecutor, has decided to sue Bank of America for negligence, stating that the bank acted the way it did largely because she was African American. The judge has ruled in BofA’s favor, stating that Henry’s suit is an “unjustified” attempt to violate Bank of America’s free speech. Not only that, but the judge ordered Henry to pay BofA’s $50,000 attorney fees.
Sharon Henry is considering an appeal.Wow, look, black lesbians exist and they experience a unique reality of homophobia and racism. AKA fuck racism, fuck racism apologists, and fuck erasure.
I’m glad she won, and I can’t say if she would have been able to if she didn’t already have her own resources as an attorney.Correction: She didn’t win! I got the names and abbreviations confused.This racism is the norm, never forget that.
No, she didn’t win. She lost. In fact, the judge sentenced her to pay 50,000 dollars to BofA for infringing upon THEIR “right to free speech” (their freedom to wrongfully report her to the police). It’s all kinds of fucked up. She’s hoping to appeal, perhaps.
It’s hard to imagine anyone winning against BofA, let along a Black lesbian woman in a racist, homophobic country like ours.
Thanks for the correction! I got the names and abbreviations mixed. And now, re-reading it… Just… Even worse. Even. Worse.
vomiting
A wave of backlash hit DC Entertainment faster than a speeding bullet when the comics publisher announced antigay writer Orson Scott Card had been tapped to pen an upcoming story for the new digital Adventures of Superman series. Though DC was quick to distance the company from Card’s personal views, criticism since the announcement was made in February has only continued to grow and the swell of negative media attention has now caused the artist who was to illustrate Card’s story, Chris Sprouse, to depart from the comic.
“It took a lot of thought to come to this conclusion, but I’ve decided to step back as the artist on this story,” USA Today reports Sprouse said in a statement released Tuesday. “The media surrounding this story reached the point where it took away from the actual work, and that’s something I wasn’t comfortable with. My relationship with DC Comics remains as strong as ever and I look forward to my next project with them.”
Because Adventures of Superman is a digital anthology series of 10-page short stories featuring the Man of Steel, DC still plans to launch the title on April 29. However, Sprouse’s departure means Card’s story has not only been bumped from its scheduled digital release date, it will also no longer be included in the collected print edition’s first issue planned for May 29. The collected edition will instead include stories by writers Jeff Parker, Jeff Lemire, and Justin Jordan as well as artists Chris Samnee and Riley Rossmo.
However, DC still plans to publish Card’s story at a later time and is currently searching for a replacement illustrator.
“We fully support, understand and respect Chris’s decision to step back from his Adventures of Superman assignment,” the company said in a statement. “Chris is a hugely talented artist, and we’re excited to work with him on his next DC Comics project. In the meantime, we will re-solicit the story at a later date when a new artist is hired.”
"
Dear DC Comics Editors,
I see that you have hired a writer for Superman who has written strongly of his opposition to equal rights for LGBT people. And I see that there is an online petition protesting that move.
Perhaps you could balance that decision by hiring an openly gay writer to draft a Superman story for a future issue.
I hereby volunteer.
I have been a fan of Superman since Bud Collyer played him on the radio. (Before TV was invented.) I can remember Brainiac’s first appearance, and Bizarro too. And I cried when George Reeves died.
I do have some small credential as a writer of science fiction and fantasy. I have published a few books and written a few teleplays. (You can look me up on the internet.) I have also written some mangas, and I wrote two issues of the Babylon 5 comic you published ten years ago.
I have some very good ideas that I think would work well for the series. I’d like the opportunity to write for you the very best Superman story ever.
Sincerely yours,
David Gerrold
“The Trouble With Tribbles”
Land Of The Lost
Twilight Zone
The Martian Child
(and a whole bunch of other stuff)
— David Gerrold, in response to DC’s decision to hire Orson Scott Card (via fyeahlilbit2point0)
OUTRAGE: NOM Board Member and science fiction writer Orson Scott Card was hired as a writer for DC Comics’ new digital Adventures of Superman.
Orson Scott Card has penned anti-gay rants warning that marriage equality would lead to the end of civilization.
It’s not just words. He’s even on the board of the notorious anti-gay organization fighting marriage equality, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM)![1]
We need to let DC Comics know they can’t support Orson Scott Card or his anti-gay efforts. They know they’re accountable to their fans, so if enough of us speak out now, they’ll hear us loud and clear.
Sign now to tell DC Comics - Drop Orson Scott Card now!Just because someone is a good author, it doesn’t mean they’re a good person. Please click the link and sign to let DC know we don’t want OSC!
^SIGNED!!!^
EW! Fuck that, I might drop a few more DC titles from my subscription as a result. NO ORSON SCOTT CARD JFC DC EDITORIAL WHAT ARE YOU DOING.
This link includes their contact info. Pass it on!
These awful shitbags opposed the VAWA because it meant assistance and protection for Native American, immigrant, and queer women/woman-identifying people. They literally blocked a life-saving bill because they’re racist, queerphobic pieces of shit.
Reminder:
Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card is a board member at the National Organization for Marriage, one of the largest, most visible, and most vocal anti-gay organizations. Card stands to personally make a fair amount of money due to this film. A fair amount of that money will go to fund NOM and other anti-LGBT causes.
I really enjoy Card’s writing, but I can no longer enrich him. Do not see this film. Do not buy his books. There are many fine actors in this film, and the crew is no doubt full of great people who deserve to make a living, but that’s not reason enough to see it.
Boycott Ender’s Game.
Welp, that’s worth a signal boost.
Fucking ass…welp.
OSC is a horrible, horrible person.
Amen. If you simply must see this movie, hit me up and I will send you a link to it for you to download or stream. A PIRATE’S LIFE FOR ME
…oh. man that sucks.
Because I didn’t see any links proving if this was true or not. I decided to look, and I found this.
http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/07/lets_call_a_jackass_a_jackass
WOW
I’ve always known how incredibly homophobic Orson Scott Card is, and it comes across in his books in an almost preachy fashion. I do know some how like his books, however, and I did manage to find that some are available as free Kindle book downloads (though, most likely NOT the books in the Ender series).
While I did like the Ender series, I’m not willing to go see a movie and support a man who is extremely homophobic and who will use his wealth to help fund a homophobic cause.
seriously?? ender’s game is one of my favorite books. :/
I’ve heard of Ender’s Game, but I didn’t know the author himself is a homophobe. Or that he is a board member for an anti-LGBTQ org, for that matter. Well, that just means I will find ways that will not result in me contributing to the author’s wealth to contribute to an anti-LGBTQ organization.
The National Organization for Marriage is a hate group and their name is a bastardization of an otherwise cute word I like to use.
(Source: entertainmentweekly)
It’s an all too common, if shocking story: A transgender Latina woman with HIV is attacked on a street close to her home in a low-income neighborhood in the Bay Area. Making a bad situation worse, police officers literally drag her from her bed at 6 a.m. because they think she committed the crime herself.
“They kept telling her she wasn’t who she was, and that she was a man,” explained María Carolina Morales of the San Francisco-based Communities United Against Violence as she recounted the incident to Colorlines. “She was arrested. She was taken to the station. She wasn’t listened to. She spent the weekend in jail.”
The woman went to court a month after her arrest, but disappeared shortly after her court date.
“She was somebody who was unemployed, who didn’t have a safety net,” noted Morales. “We don’t know if she ran away, if she ended up in jail or [was] transferred to another place, another city. Her phone was disconnected the day after court. We just don’t know—don’t know what happened.”
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released its annual report on hate violence motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV status last week. The report documents 27 anti-LGBT murders in 2010, which is the second highest annual total recorded since 1996. A whopping 70 percent of these 27 victims were people of color; 44 percent of them were transgender women.
The study also found that transgender people and people of color are each twice as likely to experience violence or discrimination as non-transgender white people. Transgender people of color are also almost 2.5 times as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers.
“It wasn’t a shock,” said Morales, whose organization is among the 17 anti-violence programs from across the country that contributed data to the NCAVP report. “For the last four years we’ve seen that trend—of transgender women and people of color in our communities experiencing higher levels of violence. Sadly that continues.”
Recent headlines certainly bear witness to this disturbing trend.
A Milwaukee judge sentenced Andrew Olaciregui to an 11-year prison sentence in December after he pleaded guilty to shooting Chanel Larkin three times in the head on a street corner in May 2010. Prosecutors maintain Olaciregui shot Larkin after he offered to pay her $20 to perform a sex act and found out she was transgender. Larkin was 26 at the time of her death.
In another high-profile case, Hakim Scott and Keith Phoenix both received decades-long prison sentences last summer for their role in the death of Ecuadorian immigrant José Sucuzhañay on a Brooklyn street in December 2008. Prosecutors contend Scott and Phoenix shouted anti-gay and anti-Latino slurs at Sucuzhañay as they attacked him with a baseball bat and bottles.
Juan José Matos Martínez received a 99-year prison sentence in May 2010 after he pleaded guilty to stabbing gay Puerto Rican teenager Jorge Steven López Mercado to death before decapitating, dismembering and partially burning his body and dumping it along a remote roadside in November 2009.
So what causes disproportionate rates of violence against transgender people and queer people of color?
“What the 2010 report allows us to do is document something we’ve seen and experienced for a long time,” said Ejeris Dixon of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, which wrote the bulk of the NCAVP report. “It’s really about an intersection of oppression.”
Dixon, who was a long-time staffer at Brooklyn-based Audre Lorde Project until she joined AVP earlier this year, said a lack of employment, housing and health care for transgender people all contribute to disproportionate rates of violence. Morales said that ongoing police harassment against these communities is an additional factor, making those most at-risk for hate violence also least likely to seek help.
“All of those things sanction violence,” said Dixon.
The NCAVP report found that half of those who experienced hate violence did not contact the police after their attack. The report further found that 25.4 percent of transgender women did not file a report. So what can be done to reduce these rates of violence against LGBT people and communities of color?
The Audre Lorde Project is among the groups that organize LGBT people in communities of color that are increasingly looking beyond law enforcement and the criminal justice system for a solution. The Safe OUTside the System Collective works with bodegas, businesses and organizations within Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and surrounding areas to create safe spaces for LGBT people of color to curb violence.
“What’s true and important is our communities have been and continue to organize around issues of harassment—whether it’s neighborhood or community harassment or [harassment] by the police,” said Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Audre Lorde Project.
Morales stressed that empowering transgender people and people of color to participate in decision making processes around employment, health care, improved access to food and affordable housing is another key component to addressing the problem. “For that, our organizations and institutions need to prioritize opening spaces for people to develop their leadership, to be able to engage, to learn and make decisions and so that they can see themselves not only reflected, but see themselves in the process.”
Another potential solution is for anti-violence programs to tackle some of the underlying disparities that contribute to increased violence against LGBT people and people of color.
“That can mean a lot of things: We can talk about low-cost programs, intersections with immigration rights groups,” said Dixon. “It’s about crafting programming that focuses on these populations and also developing leadership of LGBT people of color and trans people.”
While Morales conceded these most recent statistics are grim, she said she remains hopeful that they will allow her organization and others around the country to develop more effective strategies to tackle hate violence. She stressed, however, this hasn’t happened as much as she would like to see.
“It hasn’t been significantly stepped up enough,” said Morales, referring to strategies to further engage community members in the solution. “However, I have seen a lot more conversations and dialogue opening up around the community—the prison population continues to significantly increase every year, and violence continues to increase. I don’t believe its working. COAV doesn’t believe its working. I am hopeful [the report] will open up more opportunities to question the strategy to violence response.”
And this is why more visibility of LGBTQ POCs is so crucial. The endless parade of Pretty White Boy Love and the lack of [trans*] women of color plays into how this reality consistently gets ignored.
Fear and alarm of “bad blood” in children available for adoption figured prominently in the Western adoption landscape that developed in the first four decades of the twentieth century. Vigorous eugenics movements sought to control the reproduction of “genetically inferior” people via sterilization (called negative eugenics) and encourage the reproduction of the “genetically superior” (called positive eugenics).
These movements drew support from Americans of all political persuasions. Henry Chapin, a famous pediatrician whose wife, Alice, founded one of the first specialized adoption agencies, claimed that the divergent fertility rates of rich and poor were fueling the demand for adoptable babies because citizens with better genetic endowment were more likely to suffer from infertility. For Chapin, eugenic factors always mattered in adoption: “Not babies merely, but better babies, are wanted.”
Fears about children’s quality or “stock” were shared by ordinary people as well as policy-makers. In 1928, one couple wrote to the U.S. Children’s Bureau, “We are very anxious to adopt a baby but would like to get one that we know about its parentage. Are there any homes or orphanages where a person can find out whether there is insanity, fits, or other hereditary diseases in its ancestors? We would like to have one from Christian parentage.”
In addition to religious preferences, specifications for gender, racial, ethnic, and national qualities in children illustrated popular ideas about heredity. Physical health, mental health, criminality, educability, sexual morality, intelligence, and temperament were all associated with blood.
Before 1940, eugenic concerns were expressed frequently and bluntly. Henry Herbert Goddard, a national authority on “feeble-minded” children, insisted that adoption posed a “threat to mankind” as it was directly tied to illegitimacy. According to Goddard, unmarried mothers were likely to be feeble-minded themselves, thereby delivering feeble-minded children whose adoptions would contaminate the gene pool by reproducing future generations of defectives. Goddard advocated segregating these women and children in institutions, where their dangerous sexuality could be contained.
Many adoption agencies believed it a “social crime” to place inferior children with parents who expected—and deserved—”normal” children. Some agencies required parents to return children if and when abnormal characteristics appeared. Legislation such as the Minnesota Adoption Law of 1917 treated traits of “feeble-mindedness” as valid cause for adoption annulment. Medical writers in major newspapers warned prospective parents to “be careful whom you adopt,” as children who were unfortunate enough to need new parents were also often unfortunate in their “genetic inferiority.”
Elaborate genealogies extending well beyond parents to distant relatives were considered evidence of thoroughness in child placement. Case records showed that many social workers expected anti-social behavior of all kinds to be passed intergenerationally from birth parents to children. Nature-nurture studies often reflected eugenic convictions about the heritability of intelligence and tried to scientifically establish the maximum tolerable gap between hereditary background and adoptive home.
Westerners maintain that eugenics disappeared after the specter of Nazism made it synonymous with racism and genocide. While public discussion of taint and degeneration certainly decreased after World War II, forced sterilization of peoples considered unfortunate or “abnormal” has continued throughout the 21st century, even in countries lauded for their apparent tolerance.
Blood and biology remain central themes in adoption marketing and politics to this day. Growing anxieties about physiological and developmental “defects” in transracial and international adoptees bear no resemblance to DSM-IV criteria. Adopted children are systemically targeted with violent, fringe therapies disavowed by mainstream psychology, therapies that have frequently resulted in child abuse and death.
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