New Model Minority @ Tumblr

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May 05, 2012

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"Talent is a very small percent of success – there are massively talented people out there who will never be seen on screen or on stage. People always go on about talent, but you’ve got to have the chance; meet the person who will work with you, and with the script that just suits you. Timing is massive.
—
I read an interview with [Ireland’s former football captain] Roy Keane and he said: ‘I may not be able to dribble like Giggs, or pass the ball like Beckham. So I just have to work harder than anybody else.’ That might be him giving a humble description of himself, bit it’s a pretty good work ethic to apply to everything. I bring a very pragmatic, practical process to acting. The boring stuff. It’s about graft. It’s as simple as that. When I get a script I’ll just read it, read it, read it – 200 times – over and over until I’m sick of it. And then you can have your fun with it."

—

Michael Fassbender, on his breakthrough to Hollywood and his acting methodology, in the February 2011 issue of Vogue UK.
» Celebitchy.
(via tobia)

Timing is massive. Peace to sbot. This is also why I LURVE Viola Davis. Because I know acting is in her bones and Morrison said in Sula that a woman without a form is dangerous. A woman with a form is dangerous too, because if you have a form, you are in the process of transforming yourself. If you do it for self, you are bound to do it for others. In a society that is, at it’s core, premised on profit; this is dangerous.

(via newmodelminority)

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April 23, 2012

119 notes

Undocumented Immigrants Paid $11.2 Billion In Taxes While GE Paid Nothing | ThinkProgress

(Source: ronmarks, via jonathan-cunningham)

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April 07, 2012

10 notes

bowfolk asked: Hello! Chelsea (popca) and I are starting an inclusive mag aimed at teen girls and young women. We've gotten off to a great started and have sent out surveys to those who responded, but we're unhappy with the responses we keeping getting back; mainly because the perspectives keep coming from riot grrrl/third-wave oriented Jessica V white cis girls, and our goal is to have it be a brown girl magazine. Could we get your e-mail and spread the survey to you? We're interested in your perspective.

Thank you for reaching out and allowing me to respond publicly.

I am going to post my comments below in bullet points because at the time of the semester I think in terms of outlines:

Writing is labor and reading is labor. If someone does either of those for or with you, it is a gift to be valued. Do you communicate that in your ask?
If you want folks who are on the margins to participate in your project, I would ask you whether you interact with those folks on a regular basis? There are 24 hours in day. Asking someone to work with you on a project is akin to asking them to commit.
Do you interact regularly with folks on tumblr who are in the “swoll margins”? If no, why not? If you want them to be a part of your project, than it would be useful if they interacted with you, prior to your ask.
In the same way that you asked me directly, ask other folks that you would want to participate directly. Familiarize yourself with their work and say hey I read “x, y, and z” that you wrote and I think you would be a great fit for what we are working on.
I am assuming that you are young White women, this may or may ot be relevant to what I am getting ready to say next. If you want to create this space, and you want folks who are in the “swoll margins” you are going to have to do the the work to get them to participate. They are not going to show up like magic just because you ask. I do not say this to be snarky, I say it to acknowledge that community building and coalition building is hard assed work. Bernice Reagon Johnson’s article on coalition building may be useful.
I hope your you find this response useful.

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February 23, 2012

11 notes

The more I see tweets about Whitney Houston and Chris Brown, I am convinced that we are uncomfortable with our own dark sides and with theirs as well.

newmodelminority:

The ability to see someone’s darkside and to also see a space for them to transform is related to a willingness to see that in ourselves.

Point a finger, four pointed back.

But then again, I also saw Oakland, (the Urban South) be eaten alive by the crack epidemic when I was a little bear. Oakland was actually a place, EAST OAKLAND, the flat lands, was a place where folks left their front doors open and went to the store.

I’ve seen entire families, blocks hit rock bottom and turn into monsters….even when I knew that there was a person inside…

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February 19, 2012

“In death, Whitney Houston’s years of struggle resonate with public” (via The LA Times)

The pathological obsession this country has with some woman being America’s princess, with the demand that she be pure, wholesome and beyond reproach is not only sexist garbage, but a function of the ongoing delusions about this country’s own wholesomeness and purity….

We’re a culture of addicts fleeing our own lives for alternate realities, for the momentary comfort of distraction — through drugs, through the crappy food we eat too much of, through reality TV and tabloid journalism we ingest too much of, through whatever state-of-the-art gadget stays glued to our hands.

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February 02, 2012

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Working on fixing up a few things around here

plannedparenthoodsavedme:

In light of the popularity of the site (thank you!), I’m working on:

working with and adjusting the Queue settings to publish more regularly, and not just when I have a chance to approve;

adding Twitter & Facebook like buttons to the template;

making things a little more readable;

autoposting to Twitter and Facebook;

etc etc etc.

Thanks for bearing with our little growing pains. Mwah, mwah.

I appreciate your work and the fact that you are making women’s narratives visible. #Important.

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December 24, 2011

265 notes

re/write:: on spelling yr women's with y's (womyn)

miswritten:

or, a-qwoc-checkin-that-turned-into-twitter-vomit-that-turned-into-a-tumblr-post.

written for all the women of color i love and hold dear to my heart. written for myself too. and in hopes that thing can change. in hopes of being heard. from love and with anger.

—

“radical” men who spell women as “womyn” but are as misogynistic as fuck… you can change your spelling all you want, but i still see your ass. (also, being queer doesn’t give you a free pass, as some of the most cruel and unchecked misogyny is allowed to run rampant in queer spaces.)

if you proclaim to be a “radical man” who loves and honors “womyn” of color, i ask, when you think womyn of color, who are you thinking of? what does she look like? sound like? how does she take up space? how does she show her joy, her pain, her indifference, her anger, her disdain, her fear, her resilience, her hesitation? (does she?) how does she challenge you? move you? care for you? care for herself? (does she?) how does she enunciate her words? how does she move? how does she get her points across? how does she fight? how does she make peace? how does she choose to leave her mark?

do your women of color only become “womyn” of color when they are LOUD and PRETTY and ASSERTIVE and STRAIGHT-LOOKING and SOARTICULATE and GORGEOUS and SEXY and KNOWSWHATSHEWANTS and DRESSESHELLAFLY and “REAL” and “STRONG”?

what happens when they aren’t any of those things? do you listen? do you listen to the quiet ones? the ugly ones? the insecure and awkward ones? the fat ones? the crazyfuckingsensitive ones? the ones who don’t dress cute? the ones who won’t flirt? the ones who look like boys or not enough like girls or just fucking weird either way? the ones who are shy? timid? the ones who mumble or stutter? the ones who have neither academic nor “revolutionary” language to prove their smarts? the ones who doubt themselves? the ones who need to be given care too? the ones who seem overbearing with their concerns or seem overburdened by everyone else’s? the ones who don’t seem like they would have anything to teach you about strength or resilience?

do you ignore or refuse to listen to women of color if they can’t properly command your respect or attention? do you routinely CHECK OUT, GET DISTRACTED, TEXT YOUR FRIENDS, COME UP WITH EXCUSES, LEAVE THE SPACE, GET DEFENSIVE, FEEL FRUSTRATED, or TALK SHIT when they’re going on and on about some shit that you can’t be bothered to listen to because oh god i learned that already get over yourselves or here we go again or i just can’t stand listening to her or what is her point anyway or this is so damn boring hey I have a way better idea?

do you think these ugly basic bitches would do better to learn WOMYNHOOD from their stronger, prettier, louder, more fierce, more confident, more respectable sistas?

then FUCK YOU, you disgusting, misogynistic, ignorant ass pile of shit. don’t ever fucking tokenize “strong” WOC in order to PUT OTHER WOC DOWN. lol @ every ignorant ass woman-hating shitstain talking about “strong womyn,” quoting audre lorde cherrie moraga angela davis gloria anzaldua assata shakur yuri kochiyama as if they have actually learned anything from them!!!!!!!!!! what a fucking joke.

i see y’all, thinking you don’t need to respect WOC who don’t live up to your bullshit romanticized misogynistic standards for being “down” “radical” WOC. i see y’all, working hard at maintaining lazy excuses for why you can’t check yourselves (or be checked). i see you. all of you “womyn” lovers who are only into the heterolooking conventionallypretty confidentsounding—none of this goes unnoticed. and for the queer men reading this nodding along like you get it, THIS MEANS YOU TOO.

respect women of color. do not speak over women of color. do not try to compete with women of color for space/airtime. do not shut women of color down. do not assume that you know what a woman of color is about to say or do (and that you’re better than that). do not assume all your ideas are better and more well thought out than hers. do not interrupt her when she is speaking. do not suddenly begin a lengthy text message convo when it’s her turn to speak. do not tune out, get defensive, become hostile, derail, or otherwise fuck around with her. if you silence or alienate or trigger her and she doesn’t return to that space, do not tell yourself or anyone else that it is her fault. work as if it were YOURS (because there’s a damn good chance it probably was) — build trust, educate yourself, be humble. sit your ass down and listen. if you decide that that is way too much extra work because you’re busy doing real revolutionary shit, then good fucking luck, douchebag. (you do realize that our norms around who commands and deserves attention/respect come from racism and capitalism and antiqueerness, right? …right?) because i guarantee that it will come back to you and destroy your movements, your organizing, your relationships, and any revolution you could possibly dream of.

by the way, you can keep the damn y. we don’t need some revolutionary spelling shit to know who we are.

(missing the damn point of why that spelling was even created, too.)

(via bollywoodsuperstar)

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December 18, 2011

23 notes

Esoterica: Holy shit...Soooo...Perry has a portion of the film where he addresses how Black families deal with rape and incest....

newmodelminority:

karnythia:

He only kind of addresses it though, just like his other movies. And he often uses it as a way to explain why a character is mean/evil/a hot mess which…let me not get into my feelings about that trope.

Oh for show. His constructions of Black women reveal…

Girrrl. You know what you Are absolutely right. I had NOT thought about how that there WAS not a direct confrontation with the abuser. Allows the person to remain anonymous, and unmarked, which is dangerous. Imagine how transformative that could be on the screen. It could be violent, or it could be like a Familial Truth and Reconciliation commission. I don’t know.

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November 11, 2011

81 notes

withrevolutionarycries:

newmodelminority:

withrevolutionarycries:

Women of the Weird: Ebony Bones

While you are wondering what you will do after Lady Gaga’s climatic death, Ebony Bones is owning it. People have tried to pinpoint a label for her music, but from afropunk to electrofunk, I can only describe it as indescribable. Bones is not the regular kind of artist, and I use artist in the strictest sense here. While a lot of people are complaining about the outrageous costumes women are wearing nowadays to get attention, Bones is coming from a long tradition of musicians who have included fashion in their art. From Grace Jones to Bjork, Bones is stepping out in her own style and she’s no poser.

Somewhere inside me is a paper on the return to Afrofuturism, its relationship to economic depression, and the role of Black women performers within it all (Afrofuturism is largely IMO associated with male artist—Bootsy Collins, Sun Ra, etc but clearly it has a lineage of BW too.)

Ohh. Shit that sounds #FANCCEEEE. Who in partic. Shaka…Grace…Tina…Janel M….?

Off the top of my head I would add Kelis to the list. But tbh it’s not a project that I’ve ever intentionally outlined. I just will see something and file it away as being connected to this thing. The arguments about the relationship between afrofuturism and economics have been made by other scholars (I was introduced to it by a af-am musical aesthetics class where the prof’s research centerd on Sun Ra.) I would just want to add a discussion of gender/&sexuality to the question.

But of course. I would also add that any discussion of Art or of people that doesn’t take the political economy of the moment into consideration is thin at best, incomplete at worst.

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October 14, 2011

446 notes

blkgirlsrock:

lovezmyreligion:

abeautifulpiece:

Jeva’s (center) 25th Bday Shoot~ We had a Great time that day, so glad to be apart:)

Photographer: Austin Roberts

Jeva look like she choking me ;-)

Harmony on the far right:)

#blackgirlsareformthefuture.

Tags: blackgirlsarefromthefuture

Photoset

October 07, 2011

59 notes

#blackgirlsare….Shit you know the rest.

halflesbian:

felonious-punk:

gray37:

eyeniphoto:

a little impromptu shoot is always fun

Oh hello :)

Tags: locs beautiful black woman

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October 05, 2011

1 note

Speaking of that Space that OWS is Creating. “Who could expect white people to understand that the spaces we feel so comfortable in may feel exclusive or even hostile to people of color? “

Written by two White men.

Say word?

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October 05, 2011

54 notes

New Model Minority: Black Feminist Thought: Social Movements and the Queerness of the Occupation of Wall Street..

newmodelminority:

Modernism and the narrative of American progress entails that we think about life *linearly.

Take for instance the popular conception of The Civil Rights. The popular idea is that:

1. Shit was messed up for some Black people.

2. MLK came along and fought.

3. Things were better, race…

Tags: blackgirlsarefromthefuture The occupying of wallstreet

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October 05, 2011

7 notes

New Model Minority: 7 Year Old Analyzes Soft Porn In Comic Books

newmodelminority:

Excerpted from IO9

Fantasy author Michele Lee has the most eloquent response so far to DC Comics’ “sexed up” version of Starfire, the voluptuous alien member of the Teen Titans. Instead of ranting about the changes herself, Lee asked her seven-year-old daughter what she…