That Feminist Dyke

theraceproblem:

White Out: Media Heap Suspicion On Brown People In Boston Marathon Bombing [Racist “Revenge” Attacks follow]

verbalresistance:

WASHINGTON — Hours after the Boston Marathon bombing, there was alreadyInternet chatter that a “Saudi national” was the suspect. Police raided the apartment of Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, a 22-year-old student from Saudi Arabia, as he was recovering from the blasts in a Boston hospital.

Next, CNN’s John King raised the alarm about a more elusive “dark-skinned male” who the TV reporter said was in custody on Wednesday.

The following day, the New York Post got more specific. It slapped pictures of two young men on its front page, calling them “Bag Men” and identifying them as persons of interest to federal authorities. One was Salah Barhoum, 17, a Moroccan American middle-distance runner.

And then there was news that a man in Bronx, N.Y., who was born in Bangladesh was beaten up for supposedly being “a f*cking Arab” by a group of men who wanted retribution for the marathon bombing.

A Palestinian woman near Boston also reported being the victim of a hateful assault on Wednesday, when a man hit her and yelled, “F*ck you Muslims! You are terrorists! I hate you! You are involved in the Boston explosions.”

What all of these people have in common is that they’re innocent of the bombing. They also happen not to be white.

For the most part, the response to the marathon bombing has brought out humanity’s better angels. Deserved attention has been shed on the heroic efforts of bystanders like Carlos Arredondo and the many first responders who rushed to help the injured.

But it has also served as a depressing reminder that the racial profiling that increased against men of Middle Eastern, Arab and South Asian descent after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks continues to infect the public response to terrorism.

It may turn out that the Boston Marathon bombers are Arab. But they could also be white, black, Native American, Asian or Hispanic. While CBS News tweeted Wednesday that a “white male” was a possible suspect, most people subjected to the speculation grinder have been non-white — all before the FBI on Thursday released photos of two racially ambiguous suspects.

The consequences have been brutal for some of the innocent people caught in the frenzy.

Alharbi had “every inch” of his apartment searched by law enforcement, with authorities seen lugging away bags of items from his home. Residents in his building called it “a startling show of force.” His roommate was questioned for five hours.

“I was scared,” the roommate, Mohammed Hassan Bada, 20, of Saudi Arabia, told the Boston Herald.

Meanwhile, Alharbi was recovering from shrapnel wounds in a hospital. News outlets later reported that he was a witness, not a suspect, and “was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

CNN’s “dark-skinned male” never materialized, as it quickly became clear that its report of an arrest was wrong. PBS journalist Gwen Ifill said she found it “disturbing” that a television network was allowed to characterize a supposed bombing suspect in such a way.

Barhoum had his world turned upside-down when he saw himself on the cover of the New York Post.

“It’s the worst feeling that I can possibly feel. … I’m only 17,” he said. His mother, meanwhile, felt “sick and upset.”

Barhoum went to the police on Wednesday to clear his name, after he noticed photos of himself getting tagged on social media. He was unable to compete in the marathon, but decided to go and watch. Federal authorities told ABC News that they were passing around his picture to find more information — as they no doubt were doing with pictures of many of the people photographed on Monday.

Later Thursday, after a public outcry over its cover image, the New York Post ran a follow-up story clarifying that authorities said the two “bag men” had “neither had any information or role in Monday’s attacks at the Boston Marathon.”

The rush for indictment and revenge has also taken a toll on Abdullah Faruque, 30, the Bronx man who was beaten up for having brown skin and looking “Arab.” He was assaulted by three or four men outside an Applebee’s on Monday, just hours after the bombing.

“One of the guys asked if I was Arab. I just shook my head, said like, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ I didn’t even know that [the] Boston [bombing] happened because I had a busy day,” Faruque explained to the New York Post.

“Yeah, he’s a f*cking Arab,” responded one of the men, before the group jumped him. They dislocated his shoulder and left him semiconscious.

Heba Abolaban, who lives near Boston, was assaulted and harassed on Wednesday. Abolaban told Malden Patch that while she and her friend, who were both wearing hijabs, were walking with their children, a man came up and punched her shoulder and accused them of being involved in the Boston Marathon bombing.

“I did not say anything to him,” Abolaban said. “Not even that we aren’t terrorists. … He was so aggressive.”

… Talal Alyan, an Arab American student, launched an online campaign on Thursday demanding that the New York Post apologize for its coverage.

“We demand an apology from the New York Post for identifying a Saudi Arabian national as a suspect for the Boston Marathon bombing despite having no evidence,” read the petition, which had more than 6,600 signatures as of Thursday evening. “The New York Post based their conclusion that the wounded marathon runner was a suspect only on the fact that he was an Arab. The New York Post needs to apologize to the falsely accused and the broader Arab and Muslim community.”

Still, Barhoum was uneasy at being targeted, while others around him in the marathon crowd weren’t.

“The only thing they look at is my skin color and since I’m Moroccan, I’m kind of dark,” said Barhoum. “Last night I couldn’t sleep. Just thinking about the consequences. What are people going to say and what the result is going to be.”

Huffington Post

ninelifedenchanter:

tvgropes:

repeat after me

1. you can be heterophobic
2. you can be cisphobic
3. you can be sexist towards men
4. you can be racist towards white people
5. i have listened to one of my best friends cry his eyes out over skype because he feels like a horrible person simply because he is a straight, white, cis male
6. tumblr if you make a grown man cry because of something he can not control you know you’re fucking doing something wrong

No. No. No.

There is no systemized hate of heterosexual people. There is no systemized hate of cisgender people. There is no systemized hate of men, nor is there systemized racism against white people.

You are wrong and you have no concept of how this society works at all.

Your friend was hurt and I understand how this must make you feel, but let me make myself clear: you have NO RIGHT to equate the suffering of minority groups with the hurt the members of privileged groups like your friend receive. The hurt that your friend has experienced is real but the reality is he is not likely to be targeted for being straight, white, and cis, and even less likely to be bullied, beaten, or killed for it.

Your friend has cried once over his treatment at the hands of other people. A lot of the members of minority groups cry every single fucking day because of people like him, and it is disgraceful that you should try to downplay this by spouting your unoriginal reverse oppression bullshit.

Your friend now feels horrible for being something he can’t help being? Good. Maybe now he has an extremely small inkling of what it’s like to be queer, or female, or of colour. Maybe his feelings of shame will bolster him to do something good for the people our institutions are condemning, instead of turning around like you and trying to “even the playing field”.

The systematic oppression of minorities is not a Tumblr-exclusive phenomenon, and neither is your bass-ackwards thinking. It happens everywhere, every day, all the time. But if your biggest concern is that some folks on a blogging website made your buddy cry? Then you have some serious fucking rethinking to do.

youarenotyou:

girljanitor:

1. Police assault a gay man. It is reported and framed as an “anti-gay” attack. White gay people say “look at the terrible violence we face!”

He is a black man.

2. Feminists decry the horrific new developments in regard to the criminalization of pregnancy, i.e. people with uteri who are prosecuted and/or sent to prison for refusing a c-section, having a miscarriage or stillbirth, having a mental illness, being perceived as “irresponsible”, et cetera.

White women: “this is happening to women!!!” News stories invariably show the pregnant bellies of white women. The stories are written by white women, and are addressed to white women. Which is also cissexist.

This is happening to Black and Native American women like Regina McKnight and Martha Greywind:

First, we describe characteristics of the women and the cases, finding that low-income women and women of color, especially African American women, are overrepresented among those who have been arrested or subjected to equivalent deprivations of liberty.

who are poor, and often living in the South, with its rich history of forced sterilizations and eugenics. South Carolina especially showed preference for sterilizing African American women.

From the report:

For example, in South Carolina thirty-four of ninety-three cases came from the contiguous counties of Charleston and Berkeley.

3. A white Autistic person writes the line, “Being mentally ill means that I am more likely to be shot by police”, and explains why hiding a mental illness can be a survival tool. 

Unfortunately, here in reality, those Autistic people who are shot to death by police can’t hide the immediate, visual fact that they are Black men.

Stephon Watts, 15

Ernest Vassell, 57

Stephen Eugene Washington, 27

Roger Parker Jr., 9

Who was not killed, but was beaten by police and then arrested for aggravated assault to a police officer. [LINK INCLUDES IMAGE OF BATTERED CHILD]

4. The face of LGBT activism is white gay men writing about police violence toward white gay people. Pepper spray at a Pride Parade is big news. In fact, many articles defend a white gay man who assaulted a Black woman and told her to “go back to Africa”. White gay men love to write about how subject to violence they are.

The problem with that is, almost all of the violent crimes including murders are against gay people of color

and almost all of those (44 percent of overall) are against the “t” in LGBT

and nearly all of those crimes are against Trans* women of color

And those women are quite likely to be prosecuted, harassed, and/or arrested/assaulted by police when they are the VICTIMS of a violent crime.

Also, trans* women of color are sent to prison for surviving a vicious attack. After a trial in which evidence of the attacker’s racism, swastika tattoos, and criminal history is suppressed.

5. Disability advocacy organization in Washington decries disabled children being criminalized, arrested, and prosecuted for minor or nonexistent infractions. News sites report that Mississippi School-To-Prison Pipeline “targets African American AND disabled children”, and uses this image:

When in fact, ALL of the children targeted were children of color:

all of them “children of color,” says Jody Owens, with the Southern Poverty Law Center–were routinely arrested at Meridian schools allegedly on the say-so of teachers or administrators, handcuffed and taken to jail where they were held for days on end without benefit of a hearing, a lawyer, or understanding their Miranda rights.

Meridian county is 55% African-American, and about 70% of schoolchildren are African American.

Disabled children of color face torture, imprisonment, vicious beatings perpetrated by teachers, and are African American children with or without disabilities are 3 1/2 times more likely to receive “disciplinary action” against them in school than white students.

6. There is a huge outcry against the NRA’s suggestion of armed guards at Elementary schools in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

A bare footnote or completely lost in this outcry is the fact that an overwhelming proportion of children of color, especially Black and Latino children, already go to schools with armed guards and police presence on the campus.

The notorious and unapologetic racist sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, has sent out more than 3,000 untrained “posse” volunteers to “police” schools under his purview. This is when his “trained” deputies already torture, abuse, beat, and murder people of color in Maricopa County on a terrifyingly regular basis.

The problem is, if you are a Black student, the campus police may be quite likely to shoot you dead.

To come full circle, the student shot dead by police in the link above also had a mental illness.

Almost every marginalized group that cites evidence of overwhelming discrimination and violence, especially police violence and abuse, is actually citing statistics against African-American members of that group.

The point of all this is that journalism repeatedly fails to accurately report that people of color suffer the overwhelming majority of police violence. The racism built into the very foundations of American society and culture ensures that this violence continues, is under-reported, misrepresented as evidence of criminality, when it fact it is evidence of the criminalization of people of color, especially Black Americans.

If you are a white person, and you experience a particular axis of marginalization and want to give statistics on the violence you face as an oppressed person, especially in regards to police violence, you should consider checking whether these statistics accurately reflect the violence against white members of the marginalized group you belong to.

And also of note: police violence is the measure of which overtly sanctioned violence perpetrated by U.S. government and society is glaring gateway into overall violence and discrimination is perpetrated again people of color, especially Black Americans. It permeates the education system, the medical and mental health systems, the social security and welfare systems, the legal system, the higher education systems, the banking systems, the commercial and entrepreneurial systems, and every single institution.

SO IMPORTANT