#WHITE SLAVE ACT

[hilacopter]

idk who needs to hear this right now but constantly being so very sorry and feeling so very guilty over your existence as part of a privileged group is not activism and you're not a bad person for not being constantly miserable

#like seriously people will act as if breathing as a white person is equivalent to being a part of the slave trade #it's childish as hell and frankly reeks of jealousy over the sympathy and pity oppressed groups get #if you care so much use your privilege to help and uplift those who are not unfortunate #kinda scary when you realise a big part of leftist culture is existential guilt and the need to repent huh. what does that remind you of. #hila has spoken

[dykedvonte]

If Ulysses has a million haters, then I'm one of them. If Ulysses has one hater, then I'm THAT ONE. If Ulysses has no haters, that means I'm dead. If the world is with Ulysses than I’m against the world.

#this is slightly joking but like also not but also like am mixed on Ulysses on many factors #infuriating because i sympathize with his pain but it’s like #he is a well written and fundamentally flawed character whose hypocrisy I found doubly in #black characters I can tell were designed by white people with a semblance of an understanding of activism and bipoc oppression #but not enough for the character to not feel like hand holding for the majority white audience #plus personal grips with the whole twisted hairs thing and reference to slave braiding patterns #Ulysses irks me as a black person on a weird personal level and I can go into debt on why him being black is a big detractor for him to me #like he continues this cycle of distancing himself from his roots before remembering over and over again through his actions #he leave so much in his wake that the courier ends up correcting or helping like in honest hearts and old world blues because he’s self #righteous in a subtle way even to himself that he believes he stand out of his one man rule when he does not play an active hand #saw a post talk about how you choose to continue moving through his story and can leave at any moment and this it is partially your fault #but what of the oath that is set before you and is forced to take that he set up #I do not have to walk it but when I do the steps are not my own but those taken for me #you have to go out of your way to change it which is not something he expects because he’s playing by a story he’s been perpetuating in his #head about you two and the effect one man has when he’s continually been that one man more so than you as many of his actions directly lead #to the one you go through also the irony in the flag he continues to bear being the real reason he has no home #like he reps it when the package is likely enclave and thus use the same symbol #also still can’t get over how anyone could have delivered the package and he tries so hard to act like it was the couriers destiny or fate #when this was the one case of chance and that once man was likely a enclave engineer and how it’s really is never one man #it the process and he’s so annoying about it like he’s a cool character but if you don’t believe in his philosophy or already went through #these ideas cause they are very common talking points in poc especially BIPOC spaces he’s just old hashings and stunted #fallout #fallout new vegas #Ulysses you upset me but I’m like I feel you could be better if you weren’t so incessant #I don’t think I ever want to make a serious post stating this about him just because I’d start yapping and it’d never get finished #ulysses fnv #fnv ulysses #lonesome road

[rgr-pop]

no maggie nelson not ostensibly bad things like white slavery

#not the well meaning white slave act #more on this later…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jack Ohman, Tribune Content Agency

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 02, 2024

Today, Florida’s ban on abortions after six weeks—earlier than most women know they’re pregnant—went into effect. The Florida legislature passed the law and Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed it a little more than a year ago, on April 13, 2023, but the new law was on hold while the Florida Supreme Court reviewed it. On April 1 the court permitted the law to go into operation today. 

The new Florida law is possible because two years ago, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court  overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the constitutional right to abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the modern court decided that the right to determine abortion rights must be returned “to the people’s elected representatives” at the state level. 

Immediately, Republican-dominated states began to restrict abortion rights. Now, one out of three American women of childbearing age lives in one of the more than 20 states with abortion bans. This means, as Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, put it in The Daily Beast today, “child rape victims forced to give birth, miscarrying patients turned away from emergency rooms and told to return when they’re in sepsis.” It means recognizing that the state has claimed the right to make a person’s most personal health decisions. 

Until today, Florida’s law was less stringent than that of other southern states, making it a destination for women of other states to obtain the abortions they could not get at home. In the Washington Post today, Caroline Kitchener noted that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year obtained abortions in Florida. Now, receiving that reproductive care will mean a trip to Virginia, Illinois, or North Carolina, where the procedure is still legal, putting it out of reach for many women. 

This November, voters in Florida will weigh in on a proposed amendment to the Florida constitution to establish the right to abortion. The proposed amendment reads: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” Even if the amendment receives the 60% support it will need to be added to the constitution, it will come too late for tens of thousands of women.

It is not unrelated that this week Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, along with other Republican attorneys general, has twice sued the Biden administration, challenging its authority to impose policy on states. One lawsuit objects to the government’s civil rights protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. The other lawsuit seeks to stop a federal rule that closes a loophole that, according to Texas Tribune reporter Alejandro Serrano, lets people sell guns online or at gun shows without conducting background checks.  

In both cases, according to law professor and legal analyst Steve Vladeck, Paxton has filed the suit in the Amarillo Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where it will be assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the Trump appointee who suspended the use of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug, in order to stop abortions nationally. 

Last month the Judicial Conference, which oversees the federal judiciary, tried to end this practice of judge-shopping by calling for cases to be randomly assigned to any judge in a district; the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas says it will not comply. 

And so the cases go to Kacsmaryk, who will almost certainly agree with the Republican states’ position.

Republicans are engaged in the process of dismantling the federal government, working to get rid of its regulation of business, basic social welfare laws and the taxes needed to pay for such measures, the promotion of infrastructure, and the protection of civil rights. To do so, they have increasingly argued that the states, rather than the federal government, are the centerpiece of our democratic system. 

That democracy belonged to the states was the argument of the southern Democrats before the Civil War, who insisted that the federal government could not legitimately intervene in state affairs out of their concern that the overwhelming popular majority in the North would demand an end to human enslavement. Challenged to defend their enslavement of their neighbors in a country that boasted “all men are created equal,” southern enslavers argued that enslavement was secondary to the fact that voters had chosen to impose it.

At the same time, though, state lawmakers limited the vote in their state, so the popular vote did not reflect the will of the majority. It reflected the interests of those few who could vote. In 1857, enslaver George Fitzhugh of Virginia explained that there were 18,000 people in his county and only 1,200 could vote. “But we twelve hundred…never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern.” State legislatures, dominated by such men, wrote laws reinforcing the power of a few wealthy, white men. 

Crucially, white southerners insisted that the federal government must use its power not to enforce the will of the majority, but rather to protect their state systems. In 1850, with the Fugitive Slave Act, they demanded that federal officials, including those in free states, return to the South anyone a white enslaver claimed was his property. Black Americans could not testify in their own defense, and anyone helping a “runaway” could be imprisoned for six months and fined $1,000, which was about three years’ income. A decade later, enslavers insisted that it was “the duty of the Federal Government, in all its departments, to protect…[slavery]…in the Territories, and wherever else its constitutional authority extends.”

After the Civil War, Republicans in charge of the federal government set out to end discriminatory state legislation by adding to the Constitution the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing that states could not deny to any person the equal protection of the laws and giving Congress the power to enforce that amendment. That, together with the Fifteenth Amendment providing that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” Republicans thought, would stop state legislatures from passing discriminatory legislation.

But in 1875, just five years after Americans added the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Supreme Court decided that states could keep certain people from voting so long as that discrimination wasn’t based on race. This barred women from the polls and flung the door open for voter suppression measures that would undermine minority voting for almost a century. Jim and Juan Crow laws, as well as abortion bans, went onto the books.

In the 1950s the Supreme Court began to use the Fourteenth Amendment to end those discriminatory state laws—in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision that prohibited racial segregation in public schools, for example, and in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. Opponents complained bitterly about what they called “judicial activism,” insisting that unelected judges were undermining the will of the voters in the states. 

Beginning in the 1980s, as Republicans packed the courts with so-called originalists who weakened federal power in favor of state power, Republican-dominated state governments carefully chose their voters and then imposed their own values on everyone. 

Just a decade ago, reproductive rights scholar Elizabeth Dias told Jess Bidgood of the New York Times, a six-week abortion ban was seen even by many antiabortion activists as too radical, but after Trump appointed first Neil Gorsuch and then Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the balance of power shifted enough to make such a ban obtainable. Power over abortion rights went back to the states, where Republicans could restrict them.

Trump has said he would leave the issue of abortion to the states, even if states begin to monitor women’s pregnancies to keep them from obtaining abortions or to prosecute them if they have one. 

Vice President Kamala Harris was in Jacksonville, Florida, today to talk about reproductive rights. She put the fight over abortion in the larger context of the discriminatory state laws that have, historically, constructed a world in which some people have more rights than others. “This is a fight for freedom,” she said, “the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one’s own body and not have their government tell them what they’re supposed to do.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #corrupt SCOTUS #rule of law #women #women's rights #human rights #states rights #Civil War #slavery #white Southerners #fugitive slave act #income inequality #wealthy white men #Fifteenth amendment

[reasoningdaily]

The Fugitive Slave Law was enacted by Congress in September, 1850, received the signature of Howell Cobb, of Georgia, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, of William R. King, of Alabama, as President of the Senate, and was “approved,” September 18th, of that year, by Millard Fillmore, Acting President of the United States.

The authorship of the Bill is generally ascribed to James M. Mason, Senator from Virginia. Before proceeding to the principal object of this tract, it is proper to give a synopsis of the Act itself, which was well called, by the New York Evening Post, “An Act for the Encouragement of Kidnapping.”

SYNOPSIS OF THE LAW

Section 1. United States Commissioners “authorized and required to exercise and discharge all the powers and duties conferred by this act.”

Section. 2. Commissioners for the Territories to be appointed by the Superior Court of the same.

Section. 3. United States Circuit Courts, and Superior Courts of Territories, required to enlarge the number of Commissioners, “with a view to afford reasonable facilities to reclaim fugitives from labor,”.

Section. 4. Commissioners put on the same footing with Judges of the United States Courts, with regard to enforcing the Law and its penalties.

Section. 5. United States Marshals and deputy marshals, who may refuse to act under the Law, to be fined One Thousand dollars, to the use of the claimant. If a fugitive escape from the custody of the Marshal, the Marshal to be liable for his full value. Commissioners authorized to appoint special officers, and to call out the posse comitatus.

Section. 6. The claimant of any fugitive slave, or his attorney, “may pursue and reclaim such fugitive person,” either by procuring a warrant from some judge or commissioner, “or by seizing and arresting such fugitive, where the same can be done without process;” to take such fugitive before such judge or commissioner, “whose duty it shall be to hear and determine the case of such claimant in a summary manner,” and, if satisfied of the identity of the prisoner, to grant a certificate to said claimant to “remove such fugitive person back to the State or Territory from whence he or she may have escaped,”—using “such reasonable force or restraint as may be necessary under the circumstances of the case.” “In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence.” All molestation of the claimant, in the removal of his slave, “by any process issued by any court, judge, magistrate, or other person whomsoever,” to be prevented.

Section. 7. Any person obstructing the arrest of a fugitive, or attempting his or her rescue, or aiding him or her to escape, or harboring and concealing a fugitive, knowing him to be such, shall be subject to a fine of not exceeding one thousand dollars, and to be imprisoned not exceeding six months, and shall also “forfeit and pay the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost.”

Section. 8. Marshals, deputies, clerks, and special officers to receive usual fees; Commissioners to receive ten dollars, if fugitive is given up to claimant; otherwise, five dollars; to be paid by claimant.

Section. 9. If claimant make affidavit that he fears a rescue of such fugitive from his possession, the officer making the arrest to retain him in custody, and “to remove him to the State whence he fled.” Said officer “to employ so many persons as he may deem necessary.” All, while so employed, be paid out of the Treasury of the United States.

Section. 10. [This Section provides an additional and wholly distinct method for the capture of a fugitive; and, it may be added, one of the loosest and most extraordinary that ever appeared on the pages of Statute book.] Any person, from whom one held to service or labor has escaped, upon making “satisfactory proof” of such escape before any court of record, or judge thereof in vacation—a record of matter so proved shall be made by such court, or judge, and also a description of the person escaping, “with such convenient certainty as may be;”—a copy of which record, duly attested, “being produced in any other State, Territory, or District,” and “being exhibited to any judge, commissioner, or other officer authorized,”. “shall be held and taken to be full and conclusive evidence of the fact of escape, and that the service or labor of the person escaping is due to the party in such record mentioned;” when, on satisfactory proof of identity, “he or she shall be delivered up to the claimant.” “Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed as requiring the production of a transcript of such record as evidence as aforesaid; but in its absence, the claim shall be heard and determined upon other satisfactory proofs competent in law.”

#The Fugitive Slave Law #RACISM #white hate #racism in the us #slavery #An Act for the Encouragement of Kidnapping #ilegal kidnap of free people #Black Lives Matter #white lies #white history matters #slave catchers #police origins #kidnappers #watchmen

[thursdayg1rl]

brown men are crazy I don’t even know what to say..

#keep seeing reels of them saying they want to ‘break the cycle’ by marrying a white or Bosnian(?) woman #bro what cycle.. of ur wife being a literal slave to you and acting like ur mother okay lmao #breaking my silence I think it’s sooo weird wanting to marry a white person. lowkey repulsive. to ME #like you see these 0/10 brown men getting arranged marriages to the most beautiful brown woman you’ve seen in your life. #and they think THEY are the ones who are settling. #anyways I think I’m just bitter that I will never get to be gay married to a brown woman. so there’s that #guys I think I might fr be a lesbian (this is the billionth time I am having doubts). oh well

[melancholiaenthroned]

the tumblr pirate poll drama going rn is sooo funny but its like. so annoying because its literally the whitest argument u can make like

"we dont live in a perfect world so you cant be critical of racism in tv shows if those shows also have gay people. you cannot afford to be picky when it comes to allies right now so please stop saying mean things about the show i like or else i cant really be an ally with you. the racism in the show would stick out more (to me, a white person) if there was less racism in the world overall. but as there isnt i think its fine actually."

and this is because of a tumblr poll. youre mad a character you put in a tumblr poll won against another character in a tumblr poll.

#like full disclosure i like ofmd but its literally about a real world slave owner. and if u cant understand and empathize with people who #want it canceled cuz of that like. and if ur gonna make like 3 massive public posts crying about it #maybe u shouldnt have made a tumblr poll bracket. #idk like if it got cancelled tmr i wouldnt be happy but like. there r other shows and a fictional hbo comedy show is not in fact #going to fix homophobia or change any homophobes minds. #so its not like. i just think its silly to act like tangible harm would be done to the community if a show was canceled. #when in fact tangible harm is being done every day despite it being. not. and especially to lgbt people of color specifically black people #who are the ones speaking up most against the show #whatever long tags mostly the situation is just rlly funny but im so tired of white ppl ib fandom lately defending their racism so this bit #in particular rlly pissed me off #poison.txt #.jpg

[anhedonia2]

i finally watched all of the new interview with the vampire last night. SOOOOO different from the book, but i think i like this version A LOT more! and i DEFINITELY love it far more than the first adaptation

i think when it first started i told my date that i’d fuck whoever was in charge, like, at least once.

#there’s still a lot for me to process. since i watched it all in one night #i like the rewrite not only because it shifts the focus on vampires from new orleans from a wealthy slave owner to a #Black louis and claudia. there are reasons why anne rice is from louisiana and the only brown people in her books are either slaves or #genocidal maniacs or are ancient egyptians who change their appearance to be white bc theyre ‘more attractive’ that way #i believe that she would fucking hate this adaptation. but it’s a beautiful work of art #the everything was so good. writing acting music set design costumes special effects #the character writing was AMAZING. and i really like the retconning because it gives us MORE of the character #in the book louis doesnt have a job or really even any interests aside from being depressed. but his rewriting gives him more of a #personality. same for claudia! in the book and film her only trait is hating being a girl forever #before i watched it i was interested in rereading the book but… its not gonna be as good as the show…

[creed-of-cats]

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Men standing with pile of buffalo skulls, Michigan Carbon Works, Rougeville 1892. (Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library) // A dust storm engulfs the residents of Tyrone, Oklahoma. Taken during the Dust Bowl crisis, April 14, 1935 // Firemen stand on a bridge over the Cuyahoga River to spray water on the tug Arizona, as a fire, started in an oil slick on the river, sweeps the docks at the Great Lakes Towing Company site in Cleveland Nov, 1st // America's Suburban Experiment

#anyone else thinking about colonialism and environmental devastation #love seeing white usamerican's panic about climate change and not consider the third world at all or how they got here #or how its a continuous apocalypse for people of color. like people been knowing this isn't fucking new. #“we are gonna die. it's all corporation fault :(” *buys plastic clothes off shien OPENLY made by slave labor in third world countries* #like stop acting like the rapture is coming it has already come for billions of people #at least fucking try to help #im so fucking tired of ecofacism and white doomerism and people staring blankly at me when i talk about puerto rico's environmental crises #climate change #driving through america thoughts i guess #climate anxiety #colonialism #imperialism #united states #america #genocide a fucking land and put a mcdonalds on it #parking lots fuckign everywhere #miserable car dependency that doesn't make anyone happy but fucking oil executives

[2beebebetter]

white supremacist weebs are genuinely some of the most awful people on earth i have ever had the displeasure of encountering in a fandom space

#dual-wielding racism with both hands with the ways they obsess over Japanese and Black people #like HOLLLLY SHIT if you hate my race so bad why don’t you stop talking about us and leave us the hell alone #and the way they fetishize Japanese people is so disgusting. acting like they’d all be racist and hate us like you do #and then go on to fantasize about raping their school girls. about getting Japanese wives so they can be nothing more #than maids and sex slaves to you. newsflash Mike from Wisconsin even if they did all hold racist views like you believe they wouldn’t #fuck with you either. why? because you are white and they are not. light-skin seasians are not just ‘white 2’ fuckface #if they were to call anyone a foreigner the first one to be referred to as that would be you #diary.txt

[kamaljohnsonnetwork]

Y’all Stay In Our Black American Business E.G. (Rob Schneider) | The G.A.B.

Full Show On The YouTube (Kamal Johnson Network). Link Below

YT Link

https://youtu.be/48h6E9xDpL8?si=1LOlH6Q0msCE20PR via YouTube

Podcast Links

iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/338-the-gab-101916901/episode/yall-stay-in-our-black-american-156545715/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5N5BNht0srPRtRI8nW31cX?si=3472ab2b0cb14371

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-g-a-b/id1547660066?i=1000648151806

Podpage: https://www.podpage.com/the-gab/

@youtube @revolttv @bet @foxnews @npr @nbcnews @cbsnews-blog @kusinews @starz @hbomaxes @showtimenetworks @hulu @twitch @msnbc @kpbs @vicemag @abcnews @cnnpolitics @pbs

#black american #rob schneider #reparations #slaves #california #fugitive act #adam sandler side kick #black business #shut up #comedy #funny #fyp #for your page #black twitter #white people #black people #black excellence #black show #black podcast #black owned #twitch #youtube channel #comedy videos #funny videos #viral video #black news channel #news #news update #news show

[monsterblogging]

"I know JK Rowing is a terrible person but her books are so good-"

You sure about that?

I mean, just for a start, have you taken a good look at her fantasy creatures lately? A whole bunch of them are straight-up based on malicious and dehumanizing stereotypes about actual people.

Remember the werewolves? And being a werewolf was made into a kind of metaphor for having AIDS?

And you know how AIDS was first associated with gay men? And how conservatives back in the day were claiming gay men were preying on children in order to convert them to gayness?

Remember how Fenrir Greyback preyed on children in particular? Yeah, she put that subtext in there. She was an adult in the 90's. She knew damn well what she was doing.

Remember the house elves? Remember how most of them loved to serve and needed to have a home and a master or else they just wouldn't know what to do with themselves?

Did you know that's literally what slavers in the American South said about the Black people they kept enslaved? Go look up the happy slave myth.

Do I even need to get into the goblins and the antisemitic tropes they're based on? No, folkloric goblins were not gold-hoarding bankers waiting for their chance to stab humanity in the back.

"But the characters are so good!"

Are you kidding me?

Most of her characters are pretty one-dimensional, including Harry. Her idea of making a morally complicated character is giving a tragic past to a bully. Numerous characters are little more than stereotypes. (Looking at Fleur right now.) Literally anybody, including you, can easily make dozens of characters just as good, if not better. (It doesn't exactly take a lot of character designing skill to go, "hey, actually, having a sad backstory doesn't make it okay to bully children" or "hey, maybe I should not base a character on the first stereotype that pops into my head.")

"But the rest of the worldbuilding!"

Sorry, but her worldbuilding is just as basic as her characters. Magical castles and secret passages are stock tropes. Magical people who keep their true nature secret from humanity is the premise of pretty much every White Wolf TTRPG. Most of her fantasy creatures are just common European fairy tale and folklore creatures with shitty stereotypes projected onto them.

I'm not saying "basic worldbuilding bad." I'm saying, you could do just as good, if not better, with minimal effort.

Also there's her magical bioessentialism, where only Harry's abusive blood relatives could provide him with supernatural protection from Voldemort. Rowling thus effectively declared that non-biological family isn't quite real family, and that abusive biofamily can give you some essential thing that a loving, supportive family that isn't related to you just can't.

The Hogwarts houses are one of the most insidious elements of her worldbuilding. The idea of being sorted gives you a little dopamine hit because wow now you have a li'l niche where you belong!

But the actual function of the houses and sorting system and the House Cup is teaching children to see each other as rivals, and ensure that the most toxic views of the upper class get passed on to every new batch of kids sorted into Slytherin.

Hogwarts effectively prepares children for a dystopia where magic serves to distract its citizens from how nightmarishly awful it is. Economic inequality is so bad that people like Arthur and Molly Weasley can barely afford to put their kids through school, casual sadism is just an accepted norm in everyday society, and non-humans are second class citizens. Rowling sorta acts like she thinks this is a bad thing with certain lines she gave to Dumbledore, but in the end, her special boy protagonist becomes an auror; IE, a defender of the status quo. So.

If you've never seen it, Lily Simpson's video goes into even more detail on how the worldbuilding of Harry Potter is actually incredibly fucked up, and how it betrays small-minded attitudes on Rowling's part. There's no separating the art from this artist, because Rowling's rotten values pour out of nearly every page.

Yes, there are many things in Harry Potter that evoke feelings and inspire people, but there's absolutely nothing in it that this series has a monopoly on. You can find those same experiences in much, much better media.

#harry potter #jk rowling #Youtube

[incrediblysincere]

of all the dogshit posts on that liberalsarecool blog the one that makes me want to start mauling them like a poorly trained german shepherd is the one where they say the Mann Act was "written to protect women/girls from men"

#i mean them completely ignoring biden's horrendous lies about hamas also doesn't help. #also in the post about the mann act the text of the screenshot they responded to literally called it the white slave act #no brain cells detected

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Treating the Holocaust as a privilege isn't exclusive to white gentiles. I've called other people out on here for acting like the existence of the Holocaust Museum is a privilege when there supposedly aren't any museums dedicated to the transatlantic slave trade or the genocide of indigenous people.

Jewish people have worked and fought viciously for decades to keep people from forgetting the Holocaust; museums, classes, etc are overwhelmingly started and led by Jews. Books and other media about the Holocaust made by gentiles almost always focus on the roles of gentiles in the Holocaust (with extreme exaggerations about the existence of gentile saviors), with Jewish experiences being secondary at best; media focused on Jewish experiences is made by Jews.

Jews have fought tooth and nail, often facing heavy censorship and extreme violence, to keep the Holocaust from being forgotten so that it isn't repeated. And even with all that work, gentile perspectives and opinions still dominate the narrative, often causing great harm to Jewish communities and WORSENING antisemitism.

And then other marginalized racial and ethnic groups blame Jews for supposedly getting too much attention and "stealing" it from everyone else (often while ignoring efforts to increase education about our own communities and histories), even while our communities co-opt the Holocaust and Jewish suffering and pretend that antisemitism is a thing of the past.

#antisemitism

[wavebiders]

I think what really bothers me about fanon!Astarion isn't just the woobification. That happens to every problematic white boy. It's annoying, but not news. It's that almost every trait that the fandom assigns him is something that is already explored through a different character in this very game

You want a character that's too focused on the task at hand to want to stop and help innocents? That's Lae'zel! Astarion is cool with dicking around, but Lae'zel spends most act 1 actively in a panic about the tadpole and pushes you to just find a cure already

You want a trauma survivor that is mostly self-serving but can't help but care about people in a similar situation? Well, Astarion disaproves of you helping slaves, but Shadowheart really wants you to look out for kids! Even when she gets tortured for it!

You want someone who is prone to sympathizing with the monstrous? Despite being a monster hunter, it's Wyll that has that covered! Astarion doesn't even like you sympathizing with a recently orphaned goblin kid

You want a proper courtship with a prince charming? That's literally Wyll's romance!

You want a character that tries very hard to be bad, but deep down enjoys doing the right thing, and starts to accept that over the course of the game? Shadowheart again! A massive part of her story is just that

You want the angst of a character still having been a minor when entering their abusive situation? That's the case for literally everybody except for him and maybe Karlach! He was an adult with a job

None of this is meant to be an attack on Astarion as a character, but pushing all those traits on him does the game a massive disservice. All these character's storylines exist in conversation with each other, they all benefit from the existence of the others. To instead pretend all those things apply to one character, is just

Well, it's incredibly boring

#not to mention all the other characters mentioned are women and a black man #and it's a bad look if you have to apply their traits to a white man to find them interesting lol #but anyway can't stess enough that I do think Astarion is a great character #he's just not the character a lot of his fans think he is #and it's a shame how prevalent that version of him has gotten #bg3 #astarion

[thehmn]

I finally got to watch Viften (Empire) and it’s such a fascinating movie. It was written by Anna Neye who also plays Anna Heegaard, a rich free black woman who’s dating the Danish governor of the island.

It’s sold as an absurdist comedy and I think there’s no other way to describe it. There aren’t any real jokes but you often end up laughing at the absurdity of it all.

It’s extremely honest about the horrors Danes put the black population through but thankfully it only shows it in quick flashes of art as seen in the trailer. I once watched a video where they explained why most women aren’t into slasher movies and why black people generally don’t rewatch movies about racism and slavery. It’s because the the horrors shown are very real fears and a fact of life so the only people who can really enjoy watching a woman get horribly murdered as entertaining are men and only white people can watch a black person getting whipped to death with cinematic lighting and have a fun night out. By showing the horrors in art they get to be clear about exactly what is going on without coming off as exploitative.

But it’s also very honest about the ways a society based on slavery fucks with everyone. Most of the servants at the manor are slaves except the cook who bought her own freedom years ago. She tells the housekeeper Petrine that some day she too will be able to buy her freedom and get her own slave. That’s right, the freed black people aspire to get their own slaves because that’s the sort of values a society like this instills in people. And Anna tries to be as nice as possible to her own slaves but doesn’t take her own success for granted and is more afraid of an uprising than her white lover and ends up doing some really horrible things to her slaves to keep them down.

It also touches on how people viewed being black or white back then. That it wasn’t all about skin colour but also status. That’s why all the white people treat Anna as one of them. She’s a rich, educated lady so of course she’s “white”. Even Anna express contempt at being called black because she doesn’t work in the field. The poor freed black people also call Petrine white because she dress and acts like a Dane. Not as in “you are pretending to be white” but as in you are white.

And hats off to the director Frederikke Aspöck. There’s a scene where a woman buys her freedom and they put on a symbolic slave auction where she gets up on the podium and bids on herself. All the white neighbors have come to witness it because it’s seen as this joyous day and they all clap, she’s offered to drink with them and she’s all smiles. The director managed to make the scene wholesome while highlighting the absurdity of it and all you can do is chuckle because what the fuck? The white people think it’s a good thing that she’s free but continue to keep and mistreat their own slaves, and she no doubt dreams of getting her own down the road. It’s very much depicted as institutionalized racism and not just “a few bad eggs”.

And I didn’t know where to put this but there’s a lot of interesting symbolism going on with Anna’s dresses. She always wears dresses that match the colors of the rooms she’s in, establishing her as fully part of the system, but as she begins to realize that the Danish state will never see her as fully equal her colors start to clash with her surroundings.

I watched it on Netflix and it has English subtitles so it should be somewhere for English speakers to watch if you feel so inclined.

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