#cw: racism

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Thanks to my post about the 28th, it’s come to my attention that a significant portion of humanity don’t read history books for fun, so here’s a few broad strokes of what, exactly, is going on with the cultural connotations of race within Dracula, as understood by an American:

European racism of the day was predominantly based on cultural ethnicity rather than skin color, and one of the main sliding scales (other than how old and prestigious the ancestry was) was how far west you were on the Eurasian continent. The further east you went, the less “civilized” things became, until you hit Asia and Oceania and just became inundated with absolutely rancid racist caricatures. Stuff from the “Orient” was there for exotic/shiny toys and moral lessons about how much better the West was, and not much else, so you can imagine what depictions of actual Asian people thus became.

(We’re faced with this east vs. west scale in Jonathan’s very first entry: Budapest straddles the line between the “civilized” western part of Europe and the “uncivilized,” opulent, and exotic world of eastern Europe. Jon is going from the known and familiar city into the mysterious, unfamiliar wilderness, an extremely common Gothic horror archetype.)

Both the fear of the unknown and the exoticizing/othering of Eastern Europe play heavily into Dracula’s themes, with the sexually predatory Count Dracula coming to England to do all sorts of unspeakable sordid things to innocent English women. (Not exactly Stoker’s finest hour, but this was a typical attitude of the day.)

Following that, it was also thought at the time that one’s moral character was essentially genetic. Certain people of certain races were predisposed to be “better” or “worse,” and your own moral character was also influenced by your parents’ status in society and behavior. A prostitute mother or a criminal father meant you would inherit their dubious moral quality, which is partially where “this person has bad blood” comes from. Bad blood is literally the negative morality passed onto you from your parents: you’ve inherited the bad qualities carried in their blood.

Linking back to the east-west thing, the further east you go -you’ve guessed it- the worse this supposed ancestral bad blood gets. People of “lesser” races included the Romani, Jews, Slovaks (and sometimes the Russians), and they were just supposed to be, like, naturally inclined to be bad. They were Programmed For Crime from the moment they were born, so you didn’t need to explain why such a character was evil when they showed up in your novel: I mean, they’re [INSERT RACE], aren’t they? It’s in the blood. No explanation needed. Everybody knows that. 

The assumption of the time was that such people were literally born bad, which of course naturally justified how they were treated. When they showed up on a page, you were supposed to distrust them on sight. 

Occasionally, low-class people were also treated as a race all their own, like poverty was some kind of moral failing. After all, the older, more prestigious, and wealthier your family was, the better their inherent moral quality, so poor people are obviously uncouth and have bad blood, right? 

(It’s an extremely stupid circular way of thinking, but that’s bigotry for ya.)

Dracula is a nobleman with old lineage, but he’s also steeped in the flavor of Eastern Europe: “barbaric” and proud, yet initially treating Jonathan with extreme courtesy; threateningly exotic and yet also familiar with English customs. As we go through the book, you’ll see that he almost exclusively hires Romani, Jewish, or extremely poor for his henchmen: he’s a force of evil that uses other “evil” tools, who bend easier to his will than “normal” people of “proper” races. 

(By all means, please pause here a moment to scrub yourself of the nauseating feeling that such a bullshit attitude evokes.)

In any case, Dracula himself is a pretty good example of all these racial ideas converging, which was also why he made such an effective monster to the Victorians: there’s just enough that’s familiar and proper in him that they couldn’t quite properly Other him, which links back to the transformative horror of vampirism turning something formerly good into something very very bad, which with their worldview of “you are born with this moral code because of racial predisposition and lineage” is just shocking. You mean this Eastern European man can infect our formerly good and pure citizens and make them act his way, just by an act of force? Uh-oh.

Anyways TLDR Dracula is a book steeped in the cultural traditions and expectations of the day which means that it’s lovely horror but also an absolute crock of shit at times due to racism (and several other -isms, which I will not cover here because I am trying not to make this an essay). 

#Dracula Daily #cw: racism

[badaziraphaletakes]

______________

I think we must add to our list of problematic insults... Racism and/or stereotypes against the Japanese people.

And after that I'm going to bed for the day

#mod M😇 #cw: racism #badaziraphaletakes #y'all are REALLY using Aziraphale as a scapegoat for all your hate aren't you

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Also I think it should be obvious to most people, but it is worth saying explicitly:

This is some of the most blatant period typical racism in the book (in the sense that it shows the age of the book).

Bram Stoker's characterization of Roma people as untrustworthy, lawless, superstitious people who willingly serve evil is deeply racist and damaging.

That is the kind of rhetoric that continues to negatively impact Roma people, and it is not just a thing of the past.

#dracula #dracula daily #cw: racism

[ktempestbradford]

Cait Corrain and Mental Health as Excuse

A new interview with Corrain, the SFF author who review-bombed authors she saw as getting "more attention" than her, just dropped. It's at The Daily Beast; pause before you click that link.

There are CWs on the page for "severe mental illness and substance abuse" and I'd like to add one for Racist Nonsense.

If you already read Cait's "apology" then there's not much new here. It's a wordy expansion on the stuff she said before with even more I didn't mean to be racist it just ended up that way by happenstance! After she posted her initial apology I thought about making a post like this, then didn't (due to some of what I'll mention). After reading this interview, I'm even more upset and angry.

I know it's because of what I've been dealing with the past 10 months or so. I'm going through a mental health crisis that has had a huge impact on my ability to work and write. Some of this is internal to my brain, some exacerbated by life (multiple family deaths, severe weather messing up our rental house, ongoing fear of covid). I'm not okay, and it's a struggle to move every day toward being more okay. My mental health issues are not as severe as the ones Corrain details. For me, they are more severe than I have experienced previously.

Thus, I can grok on some levels the issues that impacted Cait. I am not qualified to judge if her diagnosis truly matches up with the actions she took. Whether she's telling the truth or not, it comes down to this:

None of that matters.

Not as concerns how her actions impacted the SFF community and especially BIPOC authors.

None of the details of her neurodiversity, her mental illness, or her destructive medication journey matter to the wider community. They matter to Cait, and Cait's loved ones, and the people in Cait's life.

She can say as many times as she likes that it's not an excuse and she takes full responsibility. I don't believe that she is taking responsibility.

She can also say that she's giving the public all these details in order to start a conversation about how hard it is to be a writer or a debut author who is ND or who struggles with mental health. I don't believe her. This is not about starting a conversation, or helping others, or calling attention to issues that I agree are important to discuss and highlight and support people through.

This is, in my view, about attempting to gain sympathy by oversharing and counting on this community to not push back. Because what monster would blame someone with mental illness?

In the end, what Corrain needs is healing and support and time to rebuild herself from the people who love and care for her.

Not from the community she damaged, regardless of why that happened.

Her healing needs to take place away from us, her struggles should not be foisted on us, and her redemption arc does not and should not involve us. Because this community needs to focus on the people she hurt, needs to be part of healing both the personal and the cultural matrix that contributed to that hurt, and we need to figure out together how we come out of this stronger and protect ourselves from it in the future.

Again I say: My view on this is 100% informed by my own struggles. It's also informed by the reasons I have been able to keep on moving forward even when everything is hard: My friends. My loved ones. The corners of the SFF community that always lift me up.

Which is why it's unfathomable to me how anyone could think that it's in any way appropriate to continue to try and push themselves on people like this. It's not okay.

#cw: mental health #cw: mental illness #cw: suicidal ideation #cait corrain #neurodiversity #cw: substance abuse #cw: racism

[ladiemars]

i’m leaving tumblr, and here’s why (with receipts):

so i’ve recently been informed that i’ve been accused of being anti-black by @ava-du-mortain. this person is blocked but they have watched my blog for years, made multiple posts about me, but also started going into the direct messages of people who interact with me calling me racist.

firstly: i am not anti-black. i’m not racist. or at least i try my best not to be, and correct behaviors that are. please read this post in full before making assumptions about me.

(and for the record: i am not, and never have been, @songofsoma, but pap seems to be accrediting some of her posts to me (as seen above). she is her own autonomous person who has made apologies and will make her own response to this on her own blog.)

i have never ever engaged in arguing with pap out of hope they would leave me alone (block and move on is my motto) but this has continued, so i feel the need to now since the harassment has gotten so extreme and ended so many relationships. already pap has also gone to the lengths to message two separate artists that i have commissioned and paid money to. this has caused these artists to either cancel their commissions, block, or unfollow me (though both refunded me and were very kind in their parting). i covered their users to protect them from harassment.

in addition, a ton of mutuals have unfollowed me and deleted my art from their blog. i hope it’s a knee jerk reaction to such a terrible accusation. and i hope they’ll read my side of the story below.

————

now for the accusations which have apparently warranted this level of stalking and harassment in response from pap:

first accusation: i spoke over poc voices.

my response: in october of 2022, pap was involved in harassing a small blog run by a POC for saying that nate was manipulative. this person romanced nate. it wasn’t a hate post.

for days, people in pap’s circle continued posting about them, and they were dogpiled by this friend group even after they apologized. as the dogpiling continued, i stepped in as a white person with a larger platform than them. i asked for their permission to step in and defend them. they agreed and thanked me.

this was the post i made:

i wasn’t trying to speak over anyone. i was using my platform to speak up in defense of a POC who was being bashed for talking about a POC character. however, i shouldn’t have done this. because whatever my intentions, ultimately i am a white person and it’s not my discourse to comment on. i was speaking out of turn. i’ve talked to POC friends since and they’ve told me this as well, and i listened to both them and pap, and i haven’t done anything like that again. so i’m genuinely very sorry, it was in poor taste, and i hope the fact that sort of behavior hasn’t repeated reflects the sincerity of that.

second accusation: in chapter 9 my fic, wants and wishes, they say i falsely accused felix of assaulting a white woman and then had him violently assaulted.

my response: this is, frankly, the most baffling accusation to me.

in chapter 9 of wants and wishes, frankie has a hickey on her neck from adam. when this is pointed out, adam deflects and says it could have been one of the other three members of unit bravo. the three boys begin to argue about who, other than adam, is most likely to have given her a hickey. at one point during the argument mason grabs felix by the shirt.

so a hickey that adam gave frankie and then tries to blame on the other members of unit bravo has been described as felix, a black man, being accused of choking frankie, a white woman. and mason grabbing felix by the shirt has been described as a violent assault. i really don’t know what to say about this, other than, to my knowledge, no one who has ever read wants and wishes has interpreted this chapter as that. including people of color.

i encourage you to read this chapter for yourself and then decide if it’s a black man being accused of assaulting a white woman and being violently assaulted rather than taking pap’s word. they linked the chapter but i don’t know how many people actually read it as opposed to just believing it.

also, what baffles me further: worse things happen to f in the games than having their shirt grabbed by mason? like, the fights with the trappers? getting injured in book 2? and murphy, who pap writes fanfiction about, actually violently attacks f and throws them into a wall so hard they can’t get back up in book one. but to my knowledge, pap has never called mishka out for writing a black man being violently assaulted, just me for having mason grab his shirt.

third accusation: i called a black person aggressive

my response: four years ago in the fall of 2019, i made an online friend. we were on and off talking for months, in the same servers, and shared some oc stuff together.

sometimes friendships don’t work. it happens with teenagers. i told them that me and some people found the jokes they made about other people’s OCs mean in nature.

i’m sensitive, i have autism, i take things literally by accident sometimes. i’ve grown up a lot since then, but when i was 18/19, if someone called my character stupid i wouldn’t realize it was a joke, and i would get hurt. when i communicated this, my friend disagreed that their jokes were mean. we stopped talking. later, i was accused of playing into the aggressive black stereotype by pap.

i was trying to communicate a boundary that i felt had been crossed in our friendship. i do not remember calling them aggressive, i haven’t seen any screenshots of me calling them aggressive, but this was years ago in 2021. i do know i called them mean for sure. possibly rude too.

i’m 22 now, i’ve been in therapy and learned about social scripts for autism, and if i were to be presented with this situation again i think i would handle explaining my feelings and setting my boundaries better. using words like mean aren’t a good way to set a boundary, they just make people defensive. but ultimately i can’t go back in time to when i was 19, so all i can do is grow from it and not do it again. and i haven’t.

and i doubt this past friend wants to talk to me, but i’m going to unblock them on discord if they want to me to make a personal apology to them for that. i’m not going to apologize to pap, the grown person who was not involved in this conflict between teenagers.

————

when people of color began pointing out stretches in pap’s evidence against me, they deleted the comments and made this post, telling the non-black POC who disagreed with them and defended me to straight up die.

so take that as you will.

i’ve made mistakes but i’ve never told any person who disagrees with me to die, even as a joke. that’s genuinely so fucked to do to another human when you don’t know what’s going on behind the screen.

————

conclusion: i really don’t understand why pap feels the need to go to such extremes over what happened in 2021 between me and someone who isn’t even them, or why they lied about the choking in that wants and wishes chapter. however i acknowledge my wrongdoing in involving myself in the race discourse surrounded nate, and again i apologize. truly, sincerely, deeply.

pap obviously doesn’t want me to grow from this situation or acknowledge that i might have since i was 19. but i’m going to try to anyway. fortunately i have POC friends both online and in real life who will call me out when i make mistakes like that nate post, and allow me to make amends and improve. and ultimately it’s their opinions that matter to me—not pap’s, or strangers online who have never met me.

you can believe i’m anti-black and unfollow me if you want. i understand. do whatever you need to feel safe in this space. that’s why i’ve been trying to do by avoiding this pap. i hope now that i’ve responded like they’ve wanted me to for years it will stop, but i doubt it. i’m sure they will tear this post apart in a response and call it insincere. there’s not really a point since i won’t be seeing it.

i don’t know if i’m ever returning. i love making wayhaven art but it’s just not worth it to stay in this environment.

final add on, tw for csa:

believe it or not i am a real person. so if you read this and still think i’m racist please just unfollow and block me. you don’t need to tell me, pap already has.

this whole thing with pap on tumblr has started to affect me in my real life. in february i started being treated by a therapist for five years of childhood sexual abuse from my father and i was using wayhaven as an unhealthy distraction from it. that’s why i wasn’t responding to the hate in my inboxes or the posts pap made. i’m in a fragile state and people around me were advising me not to because of that. but each time i ignored them their behavior would escalate, and now their messaging everyone i know that i’m racist and to not interact with me. it’s been really triggering in a lot of ways because i was shunned from my family when i tried to speak up and wasn’t believed. so i’m going to do what pap won’t and stop seeking out what’s having such a profoundly negative impact on me.

————

— mars

#the wayhaven chronicles #twc #wayhaven #mars talks #cw: csa #cw: racism #long post

[shepherds-of-haven]

Regarding the various Norm subgroups, are there varying degrees of tolerance/intolerance across geographical regions or is it pretty much the same?

Sorry, do you mean tolerance/intolerance towards the Diminished, or between the Norm subgroups themselves? I'm going to assume you meant the former, in which case:

Norms from the Damba Plains region tend to have, like, average tolerance towards Diminished. In the bigger cosmopolitan cities where Diminished populations are high, it can be mixed: Diminished aren't outright shunned because their presence is so common and normalized, but the wealth and class disparity can be noticeable and there are definitely pockets of bad actors who are super discriminatory towards them, but also tons of Norm neighbors and commonfolk who don't really think anything of it, so it's pretty much mixed? Tensions in Haven are especially high because it is the seat of power for the Autarchy, but in places like Ambryn and Rithmere, it tends to be a bit calmer.

In the Southern Crescent (and the more south you go in general), tolerance towards Diminished is noticeably higher and more lax. In places like Courtshore, Conte, and Leore, which are heavily mercantile and rely on a lot of foreign trade and diverse business, outright intolerance or violence towards Diminished is fairly rare: it's not something that's really remarked upon.

The more north you go from Haven, the opposite is true, at least until you hit Thielwood: Sacoridian Norms or just generally people who live in rural communities north of Haven (think of Rivercross if you went there in Chapter 6) tend to not really be used to Diminished as much as in the big cities, so they tend to be suspicious of them as outsiders, but it's not so much "discriminatory" (like hey, you can't come into this bar) as it is... baffled? Like they'll stare and gawk at Diminished folks who ride into town. It's not necessarily a malicious thing, it's kind of like Diminished people seem like figure out of fairytales so you have all this misinformation about them and are kind of surprised to see them around, but outright intolerance versus squinty-eyed wariness is rare.

Hanish Norms are the most intolerant geographically of the Diminished, so the more west you go (after crossing the Shield Peaks), the less Diminished you're going to encounter, and the less friendly the locals are going to be towards you (at least when you're talking about the big cities). Kinley, Orlop, Brunen, Strindmor, and Leyholm are okay, though Diminished travelers should be more on their guard--but those cities are near the King's Road and see a lot of trade, so the general atmosphere tends to vary around indifference to mild distaste, with outright brawling or harassment being fairly rare. You might get snubbed or charged higher rates than other customers by some (not all obviously) Norm folk, but it usually stops there.

Places like Heth Macoll, Lindell, and Sorano are the most outwardly intolerant towards the Diminished. Most Diminished people avoid these places. Ironically, however, the rural communities this far west are more excited to see Diminished travelers and treat them with more reverence, hospitality, or respect: they're generally laws unto themselves out there, and their tiny communities are so isolated that they get excited to see pretty much anybody. So it's a mixed bag!

So I'd say the vast majority of Diminished people stick to the Eastern half of the Continent, and the Norm-ruled cities in the Southern Crescent are generally seen as the most tolerant, while the Norm-ruled cities in the far West are the least! Hope that answers your question!

#Shepherds of Haven #worldbuilding #races #cw: racism

[venvellan]

i routinely think about the horrible torturous waking nightmare it would be for lavellan to find inquisitor ameridan. you've spent weeks chasing after his trail under the assumption that he's human and only just discovered that telana was elven after historians/the chantry tried to erase her existence entirely. it's only by breaking his spell over hakkon and un-freezing him out of time that you realize he's– dalish? "andaran atish'an. i am glad drakon's friendship with our people has remained strong." oh, god, no.

you can tell the world he was dalish. you can try to correct history and give him the rest he deserves, but would they even believe you? the dalish inquisitor lavellan finds the only other inquisitor in chantry history and he was also dalish? you have to try, and some will believe you, but the human lords don't care. you'll find the most resistance in "educated" circles of historians, where they'll likely be whispering that you made it all up.

you may have spent your entire career as the inquisitor questioning how you'll be remembered, and the answer lies in finding ameridan. one day you'll be lost to time, and the few who remember you will do it incorrectly. public perception of you now is that you're a tool and servant of the chantry, despite not being andrastian, despite direct opposition from the chantry, but hundreds of years from now? some of the dalish may remember who you really were, but in a future under the chantry, they'd be fighting an uphill battle trying to keep that version of you alive. your only chance is to catalog your life, your identity, as dutifully as possible. write journals and letters reminding the world of who you are. leave little pieces of you behind, in hopes that it'll make a trail through time straight to you. the real you.

that's what my lavellan does, anyway. finding ameridan awakens such dread in him that he starts recording as much of himself as possible. the weeks after have him holed up filling journals with who he is, where he's from, his beliefs, his family tree. the choices he's made and exactly why, the people he wants to fight for. he keeps up that habit in the months and years afterward, writing as much as he can fit on the page about any relevant topic. varric could write about the inquisition, and he'd do his best, but a good story — a story that sells — is about fighting the templars and the demons and defeating corypheus. being elven would take up a paragraph at most in varric's story, and it's just not enough. people could forget him regardless, no matter how hard he tries, but he'll fight it as long as he lives.

and if all else fails, mythal forbid, hopefully the name 'lavellan' sounds elven enough.

#this topic is so important to me #i love inquisitor lavellan and so much of the story is so deeply tied to them #we deserved greater exploration of it #and im so vehemently opposed to the 'not like other elves' shit that's ever-present in inquisition #of course i'm like other dalish. i am dalish #i saw someone reblog one of my other posts with something like 'i am them they are me' #heavy on that #inquisitor lavellan #inquisitor ameridan #dalish #dalish elves #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dai #cw: racism

[danepopfrippery]

#selma blair #gaza #free gaza #free palestine #islamophobia #cw: racism #disabled #disability #chronic illness #spoonie #ms #multiple sclerosis

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Far right, racist Tory councillors at it again. This is the nature of the Tory Party.

#uk politics #racism #cw: racism #far right #fuck the tories

[summerlinenss]

i’m not gonna give either of you the attention you want but fyi: preaching how i’m “woobifying slaveowners” before saying “i hope taika waititi gets impaled on a spike” & weaponizing the palestinian flag alongside the phrase “kill yourself!!!!” is all painfully ironic and doesn’t exactly help your cause, dear anons. 💕

#i say this as someone who’s pro-palestine #cut that shit out it’s not cute #also i’m literally just laughing at any anon hate and deleting it so you’re all wasting your time sending it i couldn’t give less of a fuck #anon hate #anon harassment #cw: racism #cw: antisemitism #cw: suicide #taika waititi #ofmd #our flag means death #save ofmd #renew as a crew

[segasister]

Wait. Since when weren’t Irish people considered white?

Good question, totally real anon and not a self-ask created because the previous post wouldn’t make sense if I just added articles on anti-Irish sentiment there.

Like I said in those tags, Irish people weren’t considered, “white,” until recent years. When Irish immigrants came in the 1840s and 1850s—mostly due to the potato famine in the latter half of the former decade—they were portrayed as ape-like, brutish—sound familiar?—and invading an already established culture that has been living here for a long time now—ironically.

They were Catholics in a, “Protestant nation,” who didn’t speak English. And people were worried that they were going to replace the President with the Pope—I wish I were joking—and replace secular law with religious doctrine—again, ironically. Not to mention, they didn’t want the Irish immigrants to come for their women and bring their criminal activity to this nation.

How did they, “become,” white? By participating in the oppression they once suffered from, and turn it on Black people. Only then were they considered white by their fellow Americans. Hell, it was heavily rumored that Irish immigrants were also enslaved—and some Irish descendants still believe in said rumor. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, but I don’t blame them for believing it, considering how poorly Irish immigrants were treated when they first came to America. (plus, Irish immigrants were made to be indentured servants back in the 17th Century… hardly any difference between that and slavery, only you consent to it via contract, and therefore not considered property.) Unfortunately, this rumor, nowadays, comes at the expense of the Black Lives Matter movement, in an attempt to still be seen as, “white.”

Sources:

When Irish Immigrants Weren’t Considered White

When the Irish Weren’t White

Let’s Squash the Myth That the Irish Were Ever American Slaves

#from: anonymous #Irish #Irish American #CW: Racism #CW: Slavery mention #The History Side of Tumblr

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Ok, so since today’s entry brought up the concept of “criminal types,” it is a good time to talk about the 19th century and phrenology.

When characters like Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Jonathan and Mina refer to phrenology or the resultant criminology, it is supposed to show us as readers that they are scientifically literate and read up on the latest ideas. However, as modern readers, it is impossible to escape the awareness of how racist this science is.

For context, the 19th century is when a lot of what we would consider the “social sciences” began to emerge as fields of study. There was a desire, which increased across the century, to understand people and societies on a scientific level. And - importantly- there was the scientific desire to schematize humanity. This is when you see anthropologists creating hierarchies of distinct races, and this was in service of justifying colonialism. If Europeans from imperial powers were “superior” by virtue of physical and anthropological factors, then their domination and exploitation of the rest of the world was “natural.” Though it should be noted that at the time scientists were discussing the superiority of “Nordic”/”Aryan” races, which did not include large parts of Europe

Within that, there is the emergence of phrenology as a facet of physical anthropology. The general idea of phrenology is that features of the face and bumps on the skull can be read to know the traits of the person. It results in a whole subset of science that is interested in using calipers to measure parts of people’s faces and deciding whether their features indicated good or bad things about them. It also included deciding what the “typical” features of a ethnic group indicated about their culture and personalities.

(Dr. Gustav Retzius about to measure the skull of a Sami man)

I am going to put the rest under the read more because of some of the racist imagery. 

So, from this there are whole charts about what things mean. And they privilege typically Northern European features as more trustworthy and intelligent and good.

For example, you can imagine what groups of people this is describing:

Hooded eyes and hooked noses being deceitful. I don’t think I need to explain in detail who that paints as inherently untrustworthy.

And here is a class around the turn of the century learning about what nose shapes mean:

And this strain of science led to linking facial features to criminality. Scientists, prominently Lombroso, in prisons measures the features of inmates and from that created theories about how you could see if someone was born to be a criminal.

These “criminal types” fell into several categories but on the whole they were considered to be underdeveloped and thus selfish and self-serving. When the characters are describing the Count as one of these criminal types, it is meant to tell us that he is smart in some ways but also single-minded, selfish, and deceitful. This makes him more like a demanding child in a grown man’s body, and thus makes him unfit to live in society.

And let me be clear here, part of the idea of schematizing criminality in this way was to eliminate criminality via eugenics. If criminal types could be identified, they could be stopped from reproducing their criminal genes.

And if you look at this chart, you can get a sense of how this runs right into racism again:

Take note again of the darker features, hooded eyes and pronounced hooked nose. 

It should not escape your notice that the Count’s features are described as “not good features” and that they are more like those of these criminal types. The insistence of describing faces so often is all built into this same pseudoscience.

We know now, after some truly horrific things coming from eugenics and racist anthropology, that this is all pseudoscience. You cannot read personality from facial features. While there is still so much about people being “born criminals” in criminology, it does not usually imply that just having racial features makes it clear that someone was born to murder or steal.

And I must reiterate: The book thinks this is cutting edge science. We need to exercise our own critical thinking when we read these things from a modern perspective.

#dracula #dracula daily #cw: racism #cw: scientific racism

[zwoelffarben]

on break to avoid killing a customer.

maga hat, loser flag shorts, and an offensive t-shirt.

today's offensive shirt: front and back, a picture of George Floyd's last moments, below which are the words "one less ghetto rat for sectioning."

#cw: racism #racism