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come fly with me

@witchymerqueer-blog / witchymerqueer-blog.tumblr.com

wassup muthafuckas? my name is tracie and i'm a queer black feminist witchy pansexual merqueer. i blog about self-love and mermaids and growing and linkin park and black womyn and love. pronouns: she/he/they/mer
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sites everyone deserves to know about

  • 7cupsoftea - free online therapy + you can help people too.
  • thriftbooks - cheap books, need i say more?
  • readanybook - also some free books
  • imalive - online chat for suicidal people / people in crisis.
  • freerice - donate to the hungry while keepin’ yo mind fresh.
  • zennioptical - glasses. i got my current frames + lenses for $60 total 
  • mathway - get answers to math problems.
  • 10 minute mail - temporary email address to sign up for sites.

That email one

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Take a facet of crime, and then look at television shows/movies that feature those criminals as protagonists.

White mobs.

White pirates.

White serial killers.

White political corruption

White drug dealers

I mostly want to talk about this as a TV phenomenon, but pick a crime, any crime, and Western media has probably made a movie/TV series/play/etc. with a white person that romanticizes the criminal activity. No matter what, a white person can do whatever terrible crimes and still have a TV/movie fanbase that loves them.

When you see black or brown people committing crimes on screen, you are to see them thugs and criminal masterminds and people to be beat down.

When you see white people committing crimes on screen, you see a three-dimensional portrait of why someone might commit that crime, how criminals are people too, and how you should even love them for the crimes that they commit because they’re just providing for their families or they’ve wronged or they’re just people and not perfect. This is particularly a luxury given to white male characters, since there few white female criminals as protagonists.

If and of the above shows were about black or brown folks, there would be a backlash of (white) people claiming that TV and movies are romanticizing criminals and are treating them too much like heroes and that it will affect viewers and encourage violence and “thuggish” behavior. And yet fictional white criminals get to have a deep fanbase who loves these white criminals, receive accolades and awards, get called amazing television that portray the complexities of human nature. Viewers of these characters see past the atrocious crimes and into their humanity, a luxury that white characters always have while characters of color rarely do. The closest that mainstream TV has come to showing black criminals as main characters is probably The Wire, and even then, the criminals share equal screen time and equal status as main characters as the police trying to stop them.

The idea that crime can be so heavily romanticized and glorified to such a degree is undoubtedly a privilege given to white characters. The next time you hear someone talk about Dexter Morgan or Walter White in a positive way, it may be an opportunity to rethink how white people can always able to be seen as people no matter what they do, while everyone else can be boiled down to nothing but a criminal.

I always felt extremely uncomfortable with this trope because, not only is it racist, but it tends to feed into the already too common propensity society has to humanize, romanticize and exonerate irrevocably terrible white men. Like if you’re a white man and you commit awful crimes, you will likely go down in history as a legendary celebrity and historical figure

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wintergrey

Reminder that Ferguson is a food desert and school is canceled. People’s movement is restricted. The work of the St Louis Food Bank is vital right now. Help if you can. (x)

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cyprith

Consider also donating in Michael Brown’s name, as the erin e did above.

Let the Ferguson police department know:

Ferguson Police Department

222 S Florissant Rd

Ferguson, MO 63135

314-522-3100

Oh god, I keep forgetting school starts earlier in the south. Get food to the babies!

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dudes will call you a ho if you go to church or a ho if never seen the inside of a cathedral

dudes will call you a ho for fucking one person, one hundred people, or for not having sex with them

my point is that if you’re gonna be called a ho regardless, at least do yourself a favor and be the ho that YOU wanna be

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tarynel

I am inspired.

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