Assuming that such a “definitive” look is even possible—which is frankly doubtful—it is a huge problem that the book doesn’t even seem to know that, as early as the late-’70s, there were fertile punk scenes in any number of major global cities, most of which were not nearly as homogenous as the editors assume. From NYC to London to Warsaw to Tokyo to Sao Paolo to Istanbul (yes, the first Turkish punk record is from 1977/8!) to Stockholm to Manila, punk as a phenomenon was global from its inception. This is to say nothing of hardcore, which exploded at the tail end of the 1970s—inarguably simultaneously—in tens of countries in the world. Hell, a favorite HC nurd pastime is arguing about whether the first HC band was the Middle Class from California or the SS from Japan or Lixomania from Brazil or…well, you get my point. None of this is to discount the complicated transnational networks—propped up by capitalist relations and implicated in lingering colonial structures of power as they are—in which punk has always operated, and will continue to operate.¹ This is the fucked up world in which we live, and I am the last person to romanticize punk as the colorblind utopia (or gender-neutral, or transcendent of class, etc.) some scene participants with their heads in the sand tell themselves that it is. Rather, it is to say that any study of punk must take into account this global-ness—and with it the profoundly different racial/ethnic/class/gender classifications that are at work in any given context (this means, in part, that we cannot afford to only see race in black and white, or only think of race in one way)—particularly if it hopes to understand how something like race or ethnicity is navigated by punks around the world. One cannot simply quote the Clash and be done with it.²

To be fair, the authors do admit that the “claim that punk is just a white riot” is a “dubious” one (213), but they nonetheless replicate this logic over and over (and over and over) throughout the book. From the opening chapter, which promotes the idea that punk is primarily a terrain in which oppositional whiteness is navigated (“Punk offered a space for young Whites growing up in a multicultural world to figure out what it meant to be White”), to the final chapter, which needs the help of professional American (and Canadian) anthropologists and ethnomusicologists (!!!) to tell us about punk scenes in Mexico and Indonesia (apparently these punks do not know how to speak or write for themselves), punk is understood as something that travels from “us” to “them.”

(Source: shutdowninthedepthsilay, via jamiesinverguenza)

2:31 pm  •  19 January 2012  •  48 notes

suzyxisntreal:

Dear Peech— and all those affected by my angry comments—

I have decided to respond to your letter, because I think you brought up some pretty strong arguments. Instead of berating me by telling me that I sat there and watched it happen, and that I can fuck off, or that I’m “lapping up white feminist’s piss…” (Which I can’t find a link to anymore!) You listed your points very clearly, and I appreciate that.

I myself wondered why nobody stopped that girl from holding up such an awful sign. I asked organizers if they had seen it, and of those who had I asked them why they did nothing about it. I was infuriated. It’s a given that when a white pop culture icon such as John Lennon writes something as ignorant as “Woman is the N—— of the World,” people stand by him to defend his intentions, as some idiots have on facebook. Some people truly believe pop stars like him are infallible, and that his shitty “good intentions” should be regarded as gold— despite the fact that his reappropriation of a violent word was not his to make. Out of his entitlement, he simply felt it was his domain to step into. As if women, especially women of color, really needed a poorly-executed nod from him. And the defense of his presumptuousness is the behavior of a culture pervaded by white supremacy.

But also, the fact that almost nobody around her even stopped to question it, is also on par with a culture pervaded by white supremacy. Their silence— our silence— perpetuates that culture.

That said, many of us organizers wanted to break from that culture. What my original bratty post was addressing was not even the sign, but the fact that we did a lot of work to give QPOC a place at Slutwalk, and it has gone far unrecognized. Contrary to your statement, Peech, we had multiple black women speak at our event— like poet Eboni Hogan, and trans activists like Lourdes Ashley Hunter and Ceyanne Doroshow. We also hosted Kenyon Farrow from Queers for Economic Justice, who wrote an amazing speech about his stance as a queer Black man at Slutwalk. Not a single critique has acknowledged these fantastic speakers, or engaged with what they personally had to say about their own unique positions as black people at Slutwalk. They have been repeatedly erased in this dialogue. And if erasure and exclusion are forms of oppression, then we must all try to engage with them, lest we perpetuate cissexism and heterocentrism in this movement, too.

And you know what? I’m an enormous hypocrite for saying how much I wanted to build a positive community… and then shut down those who said queer POC were not welcome there, simply because I was there myself. I’m really fucking glad that I, a QPOC, was able to speak at the event. But that was a privilege I had, by virtue of living in NYC. I’ve been busting my ass as a nanny and an intern to finish my degree and live here. My family can’t afford to help me. But living here and taking part in all these activist-y things is a HUGE privilege. It was my own foolish shortsightedness and anger that moved me to post something as dismissive as, “You weren’t there… Y’all don’t know shit.” 

I want to apologize for that. My intention wasn’t to shut black women up. That was a post that came out of my own sense of feeling erased when reading critiques of our march, because I was just thinking, “Hello?! What about me? Or my friends? Or the speakers?” We did put a lot of work into it, and especially to into making it more inclusive than previous Slutwalk events. But I understand now that the event’s failure to be more safe for POC is part of an issue that’s much, much larger than me, myself and I. We all feel that we failed you because of that girl’s sign, and some of us felt we failed you by keeping as exclusionary a name as Slutwalk. (And the fail grew harder after she wrote a clumsy, half-assed facebook apology. And even harder when her buddies decided to pile on the ignorance. And much, much harder when I wrote my backlash.)

That said, I felt personally attacked on tumblr, by a handful of people. I never told you to stop complaining, and I’m not coming after anyone on tumblr to bully them. I never sent anyone personal messages, nor did I actually tell anyone to shut up. I don’t have the time. I’ve got a bad cold, and I can barely even sit at my computer long enough to track down every response. But telling me to kiss your ass is not a critique, that is an attack. This is a critique, or this, and so is this, and this really useful one, and so is Peech’s letter. These were brought up at tonight’s meeting. But of course, I never stopped to address these critiques, but instead, focused on somebody’s personal attacks. That was mistake #2. So I know my priorities are already fucked, if I’m entertaining attacks on me, instead of paying attention to the people interested in contributing to the building of a movement. 

However, addressing my problematic behavior is one thing, but attacking the validity of my experiences as a WoC because I organized Slutwalk is another, and it’s very personal one that hits too close to home. Nobody has the right to tell me I’m not brown enough to be offended by racism— there’s no litmus test for that, nor should there be. None of us can kick each other out of the WoC club because we disagree on effective tactics to end rape culture. But the best thing I could do was to calm the fuck down, stop posting angry retorts, and take the time to listen and learn from you all. Aside from laying in a Nyquil coma and attending the post-SW meeting, that’s exactly what I spent the day doing.

So notyourkinddear, among others, can keep on hating me. Fine, my life isn’t over. And I won’t be demoted in my organization because, to the confusion/frustration of some white feminists I’ve previously called out, we organize as a non-hierarchical entity, and everyone is responsible for themselves. This is why it’s taken so damn long (read: 48 hours) for us to come up with a response. We have to meet as a group and have a consensus on any statements we make publicly as a group. And for anyone who’s tried to have consensus among a group of 40-50 people, you would know that takes a loooooooong time. It is because of that lag that I felt responsible to respond to criticisms on tumblr so briskly and haphazardly. Because 1) nobody else was and 2) I felt empowered to say something about feeling excluded. But now I know that was not the right thing to do.

But one thing I WILL do is own up to my own irresponsible, emo responses, and not on behalf of all the organizers of Slutwalk, but on behalf of myself. I’m really sorry if I’ve hurt you. The black women of tumblr don’t have to put up with my tantrums by putting it more nicely or giving me pity. I don’t want you to feel bad for me. Because I fucked up, big time. We all did. And even as a queer woman of color, I know that I don’t come from a position of moral purity because of the oppression I face. This is something I will continue to work on for the rest of my life, and it starts with myself.

That said, I’ll be taking a break from tumblr for a few days. To those who supported me the whole time, I salute you. For those who enlightened my sorry ass as to why I can’t and shouldn’t ever be responsible for representing All Women of Color— because that in itself is a logical fallacy— I thank you. Very much. And whatever movement you choose the rep, even if it isn’t Slutwalk, I wish you all the best of luck.

-Suzy X.

(Source: brujacore)

2:13 am  •  7 October 2011  •  54 notes

I am a slut. And I have always been a slut. Some of you may find this tongue-in-cheek, or even annoying coming from a male-identified person, right? Because when men call themselves sluts or ho’s, or players or whatever, it doesn’t carry the same social stigmas that it carries for women, particularly women of color. I understand that.

But I am not here to make fun of sexual violence, street harassment or any other form of nonconsensual behavior, often visited on the bodies of women. Nor am I here to try to displace the impact of gendered forms of violence against women, including transgender women, have to face, by doing what people with whatever relative form of privilege try to do when they want to justify being in spaces not deemed for them―to claim that they too, suffer forms of oppression. And then proceed to take over and displace the most impacted voices. But I am here because of this:

When I was 14 years old, as my body started to develop, and my particular kind of Black gay gendered body began to move through the world, I began to receive a lot of attention for older men. I was harassed on the street. I was, on 3 different occasions in one week when I was 15, followed by three different men, one of whom was in a car. When I was about 25 years old and living in New York City, I was once followed by a white van while walking to the train at 4am in the morning on my way home from clubbing in Chelsea, and had to run like hell to get away from it. (Read more…)

(Source: brujacore)

11:12 am  •  6 October 2011  •  43 notes

“Since the notion that we should all forsake attachment to race and/or cultural identity and be “just humans” within the framework of white supremacy has usually meant that subordinate groups must surrender their identities, beliefs, values, and assimilate by adopting the values and beliefs of privileged-class whites, rather than promoting racial harmony this thinking has created a fierce cultural protectionism.”

— bell hooks, “Killing Rage”  (via bhavitavyata)

(via buckleysxangel)

12:37 pm  •  4 October 2011  •  940 notes

suzyxisntreal:

I’m a proud Slutwalk NYC organizer. But because of my own troubled history with it, I have no interest in reclaiming the word “slut.” That’s not at all why I’m doing this.

Read More

(Source: brujacore)

10:16 pm  •  23 September 2011  •  96 notes

littleorphanammo:

On the one hand I think it’s interesting and hopeful that white people (because POC don’t need another lesson) are personally identifying with the horrific injustice of Mr. Davis’ case, and that they are mobilizing. That they are recognizing how racially unequal the justice and prison system is, in general. For every Troy Davis we hear about there are hundreds and thousands that we don’t.

On the other hand we white folks really aren’t Troy Davis. We white folks are the governor who refused clemency, the parole board that disallowed the polygraph, we are the DA that pushed for prosecution based on little to no evidence in an attempt to placate the politicians, we are the cops who coerce testimonies and confessions and statements, we make false claims about ‘black men in ski masks’ stealing our babies because we know the white cops will more readily believe us.

And it’s for that reason, white folks, that black folks are justifiably cranky about you saying ‘I Am Troy Davis’. It’s ignorant. It’s insulting. Most importantly, it’s a useless maneuver around the the truth, and around the ultimate point.

Because white folks, we really aren’t Troy Davis. The likelihood that what happened to Troy Davis would ever happen to a college educated white man is slim to none; a young white man convicted of a capital murder with no weapon, no dna and no fingerprints? Are you kidding me?  Wouldn’t happen.

We are the executioners, the institutions, the media and the system. That, however does not mean there isn’t power and hope in acknowledging that position. It is in that role that we have the ability to change the ideology and ignorance that fuels those structures that failed him so completely; We can refuse to continue enabling the racism and fear and ignorance that these corrupt systems are built on.

I’m not Troy Davis, and you, upper middle class white bro in your Prius on the way to the Odd Future show, are not Troy Davis either.  Co-opting the part of ‘victimized and oppressed’ because you feel awful about it, changes nothing. I feel bad about it too. It is incomprehensible and maddening and scary and tragic, and it’s not the world I want to live in.  But the problem here is that if I wanted to hold a picture in front of my face as some grand gesture, it would be more honest to hold the picture of the executioner. The bad public defender. The judges, the juries. It’s our own biases and ignorance that allowed him to be convicted on such flimsy evidence in the first place. 

Is that embarrassing and humiliating and distressing? Yep. But that’s something I have to take responsibility for. We have to.

Only in taking responsibility for how fucked up this system is, as a member of the privileged, historically oppressive group that created and maintained the system that allowed this to happen, can things change.

I am the privileged and I refuse to let this continue.

White people, come get your folks.

(via calloutqueen)

12:39 pm  •  22 September 2011  •  719 notes

poeticallyspeaking13:

…these posts about Troy Davis, I’m becoming increasingly annoyed.  Non-people of color are absolutely shocked at the atrocities that played out last night.  They’re posting pictures of themselves crying, they’re posting texts about faulty legal systems and are trying to comfort one another by offering solutions to make the current system better. 

I’m not shocked by what happened to Troy Davis.  People of color know all too well that being black and male in America is one of the worst identities to have.  It is equivalent to painting a bright red target on your back.  The system doesn’t care about us.  We know racism is institutionalized and have been raised to be cautious of it.  We know that being black makes everything harder.  This is our daily experience.  Our people are ALWAYS being wrongly persecuted, used as this country’s scapegoat. 

Not one post made by a POC contained a tone of surprise.  It is generally understood that if we get caught up in the “justice” system we most likely won’t get a great outcome.  Many of us were disillusioned, angered, and disappointed, but not shocked. 

This is where the disconnect comes in.  Non-POCs don’t talk about race.  They blame the process in itself, but they don’t attribute race to the problem.  They don’t have to watch their brothers and friends get harassed on a daily basis by cops.  They don’t feel the awkward stares if they walk into a store where the owner has already stereotyped them and has deemed them dangerous.  They don’t have to live through any of this and so they’re shocked when they find out about people like Troy Davis.  They’re sympathetic and recognize that the system is faulty, but they don’t even know the half of it because they don’t have to live this every single day.  The true meaning behind all of this escapes them. 

I don’t want to see another picture of a non-POC crying.  What the hell do they have to shed tears for?  In a few week’s time, most of them are going to forget all about Troy Davis and will go back to their lives, devoid of all prejudice.  They’ll be free to do and say whatever the fuck they want without being challenged because they don’t have dark skin, whereas the rest of us will continue living through this.  We will undoubtedly meet and hear about more Troy Davis’s whose stories most likely won’t make it to the major news stations.  The ache will never leave our hearts.  We will continue on in our lives in the quest for peace and success and whatever else one strives for, but the truth, the feeling of otherness that this society ingrains in us, will always be there.  We will NEVER forget.  They might, but we won’t.  This is not an anomaly or some kind of accident.  This is reality, our reality.

This is why hearing “I am Troy Davis” coming from white folks is not working. We’re not. If we were, we wouldn’t have been executed.

(via a-bayani-deactivated20121004)

11:24 am  •  22 September 2011  •  269 notes

“

[She] suggests that practices of yellowfacing and blackfacing (like, redfacing and brownfacing) take modeling jobs away from nonwhite models. This logic assumes that these acts of racial drag are meant to represent an actual racial body. Let me be clear: yellowfacing is not a practice of racial substitution, of a white model in place of an Asian model. Photographers, magazines, and designers know Asian models exist and know how to hire them. But they don’t hire them for these jobs because yellowfacing does not intend for audiences to believe that the body in view is actually Asian.

I’ve become really impatient with responses to racist practices of racial drag that involve comments like: “Why didn’t they just hire a Black/Asian/Latina/Native model?” (Yes, I believe there are anti-racist kinds of racial drag.) This question glosses over the actual operations of yellowfacing, blackfacing, etc. which is not about Asianness or Blackness but about Whiteness. It is about consuming Otherness, it’s about making racial difference commodifiable and palatable through whiteness, it’s about reproducing and securing white privilege. To quote hooks again, “eating the other” – hooks’ term for the consumption of difference – offers:
A new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.

”

— Unintentionally Eating the Other « threadbared (via rgr-pop)

(via rgr-pop)

10:01 pm  •  13 September 2011  •  97 notes

besttumblr:

venceremos:

guerrillamamamedicine:

and just to be clear

i will always always mock the act of identifying with whiteness. 

always. 

In the same way that men who take critiques of patriarchy like personal attacks there are white people who take critiques of Whiteness as personal offenses. Whiteness is not simply “being white” or of Euro descent. It’s about protecting ideals of white as powerful, ideal, pure, and superior. So, this can manifest itself in anyone from a KKK member to someone who claims they’re anti-racist but subtly still believes things like “whites are nicer (smarter, cleaner, etc.) than blacks (or any non-Euro white group).”

And to identify with whiteness does not mean you have to be white. People of color can easily give in to the ideal of Whiteness by assimilating and identifying with the dominant racist capitalist patriarchal system. So, this isn’t an attack on white people. White people are just as responsible for combating Whiteness as men have a responsibility to use their privilege to combat patriarchy and work with feminists to dismantle it.

White people should re-mold what it means to be white. To take a stand against the privilege they hold because of the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and racism and work alongside those who are seeking to end inequality.

i identified myself as a “white southerner” today in my african american studies class, and i spent the next hour trying to figure out if that was me appropriately owning my positionality as an outsider (my next sentence was: “and I have little-to-no background in AAS but I’m excited to learn” and that was all I said in my intro) or if it came across as the verbal equivalent of flying the confederate flag. i wasn’t the only white person in class but no one else felt the need to demarcate themselves as “white” like i did. looking like a white dude and assuming some/many of the privileges of white maleness makes this even more complicated than it would have anyway. 

This is totally a thing that’s been bothering me, like I’m afraid that in trying to own up to my whiteness it will come off as identifying with it (and part of that is anxiety about how I can both own and combat white privilege). I’m speaking of situations in which it is relevant, like I would not announce that I’m white in every introduction, obvi, but in a classroom like this example or others where I might be asked to describe myself. It’s like…I want to avoid NOT stating my race because I don’t want to communicate my whiteness through saying nothing, thus reinforcing it as neutral/normal, and also like besttumblr describes, owning both my position as an outsider in certain contexts and an insider in others.

Don’t even get me started on my feelings about being read as a white boy and what that means.

9:03 pm  •  7 September 2011  •  82 notes

“So in the DSK rape case, we’re supposed to believe that an African immigrant housekeeper suddenly decided to have sex with a wealthy white man 30 years her senior for 3 minutes on a bathroom floor in the middle of her work shift. To believe this story, you must know nothing about race, class, power and rape.”

—

Sherry Wolf (via jessrosney)

BLESS THIS FUCKING STATEMENT.

(via jumblejo)

(Source: jess-roz, via brujacore)

11:33 am  •  25 August 2011  •  1,928 notes

motherjones:

How the Koch Brothers Funded Public School Segregation

11:24 am  •  15 August 2011  •  162 notes

katewadkins:

Whiteness to me is oppression. And it oppresses not just black people, but people who think it offers them something other than dominance over their fellow man. Poor white people have been sold a bill of goods that offers them white supremacy and takes away jobs and economic growth.

— Steve Locke

1:14 pm  •  9 August 2011  •  16 notes

“Here’s what bothers me, I’m not going to pretend Tyler’s music isn’t messed up, because it is. But it strikes me that when bloggers call out rappers, and only rappers, it becomes an issue of scary black men and not an issue of men in general. When Tegan and Sara say that people refuse to call him out because he is black and that his blackness is somehow a pass to say and do whatever he likes it seems like over compensation and weak justification for calling him out because he’s black. We saw the same thing when Kanye’s video for Monster came out, a thousand bloggers upset over the dead white women in his video which leaves me to wonder if there would have been the same kind of outcry had those women been black. The focus on rap music by so many (white) female bloggers leaves me, as a black woman, cold and disgusted. Rap is not the only genre that relies on misogynist tropes, but it is the only one dominated by black men and seems to be the only one anyone ever talks about.”

—

Tiger Beatdown › Tyler, The Creator, Creates 43-Year-Old “Joke” (via girlyfolk)

Like a lot of people, I’m of many minds when it comes to Odd Future. I fucking love Frank Ocean’s nostalgia, ultra mixtape, but am really not all that into Tyler, the Creator or Earl Sweatshirt. I’m intrigued by the ways in which people’s preconceptions about rap culture, skate culture, black youth culture, rape culture, LA culture, etc. intersect to frame their understanding of OFWGKTA & the discussions that this framing process results in. (I’ve heard this process of framing & its resulting discourse described as “faux intellectualism” when it comes to Odd Future, which is interesting to me — I mean, it speaks to a definite attitude of what is “real” or “important” enough to “deserve” critique — why shouldn’t we talk about Odd Future when we talk about Glee and Taylor Swift and 30 Rock and Lady GaGa? What about Odd Future is not deserving of critique and intellectual engagement?)

Anyway, awhile ago I got an anonymous ask on Tumblr asking me how I could possibly reconcile being a feminist with listening to Odd Future & it was a really weird question. Like, no one asks me how I can reconcile being a trans* ally with listening to artists who perform at MWMF (like Mirah and Le Tigre) and no one asks me how I can reconcile being an anti-racist with liking some of Patti Smith’s work (BTW, so glad to see some critical examination of her use of the n-word circulating on tumblr lately!) and no one asks me how reading books by Bret Easton Ellis intersects with my feminism.  When people want to know HOW I COULD POSSIBLY BE A FEMINIST AND LIKE “X” that “X” is ALMOST ALWAYS a cultural product produced by a person of color and I worry about what that signifies.

(via lookuplookup)

I haven’t participated in the discussion of Odd Future, mostly because I haven’t bothered to listen to their music and therefore I’m not really entitled to an opinion. Thing is, there are a lot of people like me who haven’t actually listened to Tyler, etc, who DO feel like airing their opinions on the matter. While white indie cultural products can be just as fucked up (newsflash: everything is kind of fucked up, that doesn’t mean you can’t listen music, ok?), it seems like a lot of folks sure don’t care about misogyny until it’s coming out of a black guy’s mouth.

(via lookuplookup)

11:52 am  •  20 May 2011  •  74 notes