JESSE WILLIAMS’ BET SPEECH

“This award, this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students, that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.
 

All right? It’s kind of basic mathematics:, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize. Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.

Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Now — I’ve got more, y’all. Yesterday would’ve been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday, so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.

Now the thing is though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. All right? Now dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven’t done, there’s been no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we’ve paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You’re free,” they keep telling us. But she would’ve been alive if she hadn’t acted so… “free.”

Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter. But, you know what though? The hereafter is a hustle. We want it now. And let’s get a couple of things straight, just a little side note: The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, all right, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold. Ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, though, the thing is that just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.”

Jesse Williams, receiving the BET Humanitarian Award, 2016

#WhitesAgainstTrump: Is Silence Consent?

 Answering and asking some questions.

 

I do not blame good, well-intentioned people who think of themselves as White for not wanting to be identified with, and/or responsible for those who take pride in the "supremacy" of those with white skin, like the KKK, Nazis, Donald Trump and those who support him.

However, if all Muslims are held responsible for terrorism in the name of Islam, all Mexicans are rapists and all Blacks are criminal suspects because some are, why shouldn't all Whites be considered xenophobic white supremacists? 

I know. It's uncomfortable. There's something really queasy about being assigned to a group based on something as superficial as your skin color.

 Wait a minute, doesn't that put Whites on the same level as Hispanics, Blacks and Muslims?

I'm sure that's okay with you. After all this is America and we are all equal, right? 

Besides, aren't we trying to get away from racial, religious and ethnic labeling?

Absolutely, we want to get away from that kind of labeling, but for now and for the past 238 years this is how we Americans have learned to identify and categorize people. 

To verify this, read the U.S. Constitution and its several amendments. In this document that lays out and defines who and what this country is/wants to be, Blacks are described as 3/5 of a person. The very last racial/ethnic group to be afforded the right to vote--AFTER white men with no property; AFTER black men, and AFTER women--were the Nations occupying this land before Europeans decided they should have it.

If you know your history, you know that labeling and categorizing people by religion and ethnicity/race is WHO WE ARE. A variety of groups--Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews--had periods of being outcasts before they were ushered into the privileges of being White. Some sped up their entry into whiteness by abandoning their heritage and Anglicizing their names. 

If all of us "obvious ethnics" are held to account for whatever someone does who looks/believes like us, don't you wonder why all Whites are not accountable for the continuing massacres by white American terrorists and the bile being spewed by Donald Trump? 

There are Whites who believe they should be accountable. Whites who don't want to be mistaken for white supremacists or assumed to agree with Trump. Their organizations Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the White Privilege Conference and the older American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) oppose racism and the injustices that come from labeling and blaming groups of people for the behavior of a few. Silence on this defining issue appears as consent.

Where do you stand?

LEGITMATE RAPE

Last night's episode of Totally Biased with (my son) W. Kamau Bell, opened with a wry comment on Todd Akin's faux paus about the inability of women to get  pregnant when they are "legitimately raped." Bell said if that were true, "Why are there so many light-skinned folk in Alabama?" And he could have added, "Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, the U.S. of A."

Then it hit me: RAPE WAS LEGITIMATE DURING SLAVERY! That's why we have such a large number of light-skinned folk in this country. In order to increase the number of slaves, and his net worth, the progeny born of the white master's  rape of an enslaved woman, was always black, another slave, never counted as white or bi-racial. THIS RAPE WAS LEGITIMATE! 

There wasn't a court in the country that would have prosecuted any white man for forcing any woman to have sex. The custom (and it may as well have been the law) was that white men could do as they pleased with any woman—black, white, married, or single. With a powerful white male protector some women were immune from being considered fair game, but any black man who objected to the exploitation or abuse of a woman could be killed with impunity. RAPE WAS LEGITIMATE!

W.E.B. Du Bois, the scholar, historian, and activist who was a founder of the NAACP put it this way. “To the ordinary American or Englishman, the race question at bottom is simply a matter of ownership of women; white men want the right to use all women, colored and white.” 

The ownership of women. This is what the Republican War on Women is all about: returning to the days when powerful men could do as they wished with women; to the days when RAPE WAS LEGITIMATE. Todd Akin's casual remark merely referred to what they've been doing for some time now with their attacks on Planned Parenthood, trying to criminalize abortion, forcing pregnant women to have unnecessary procedures. Todd Akin did not step out of line; he merely reiterated Republican policy. This is nothing new. It's a significant plank in their platform for the 2012 election. Todd Akin simply made it crystal clear that the Republicans want to return to the days when RAPE WAS LEGITIMATE.

WHAT IS THE LEGAL DEFINITION OF MAN? OF WOMAN?

This was posted on Face Book and is worth sharing widely

written by

 Donna Simone Plamondon

One problem with defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman is that there is NO LEGAL DEFINITION of male or female. Go ahead - try to find one.

My testimony to the Maryland State Legislature;

"As a Transexual/Intersex person and a registered voter I urge you to consider another perspective in the debate over Same Sex Marriage. If Marriage is to remain being defined as a legal union between a man and a woman it would then require legislation on the legal definition of a man and a woman.

As someone that has been affected by and studied sex/gender issues, it became evident that not all women are chromosomally xx nor all men xy. There are also xo, xxy, xyy and mosaic chromosomal karyotypes. Kleinfelters, Turners and Androgen Insensitivity Syndromes as well as Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia and 5-Alpha–reductase deficiency are but a few naturally occurring phenomena that result in female bodied males and male bodied females. Toxicologists are also recognizing the fact that prenatal exposure to certain environmental chemicals with hormonal properties as well as many commonly used medications for male pattern baldness, prostate and heart diseases can result in incongruent sex/genital development as well as ambiguent genitalia, intersex conditions (hermaphroditism) and transsexuality. For over 40 years now many babies born with ambiguous genitals are surgically corrected (?) to female during infancy no matter what their sex karyotype.

Scientists agree that 1.73% (1 in 58) of all babies born in the United States have some degree of intersex condition. The number of subclinical cases could at minimum double that percentage. Many of those conditions are not realized until patients present to their doctors in puberty or later with fertility issues. The medical community is reluctant to tell patients due to the potential of destroying that persons relationships and resulting in depression, anxiety and possible suicide. Instead they pursue fertility treatments, invitro fertilization, egg and sperm donors, or surrogate motherhood. If marriages were to be challenged in a court of law and DNA used as evidence many now legal marriages would need to be annulled.

Everyone is born with the innate ability to recognize their own gender no matter what genetic, medical or environmental factors they have been exposed to. None of these conditions are a choice for those affected. To exclude these people from protections granted all other citizens is in direct opposition to everything this country stands for. All citizens are entitled to the pursuit of the "American Dream". .

The original concept of the marriage license was to ensure that the union was voluntary and as societies blessing to those who choose to commit their lives to each other. The real threat to our society is the rate at which babies are being born outside of a committed, loving relationship. There are many same sex couples that are totally capable of raising happy, healthy, well adjusted children that will ultimately become productive members of our society.

Marriage licenses are given to convicted murderers, child molesters and rapists. Are they more worthy of having their relationships honored while denying the commitment and responsible actions of same sex couples? If marriage is about procreation, why are marriage licenses granted to infertile couples or those having no intentions of having children?

Let us not forget the dream of the Pilgrims – those that originally risked all to travel to and settle this country. They left their native lands due to religious rule and intolerance. They had a vision of freedom for each individual to express their religious beliefs and worship their GOD without interfering in or being interfered by the beliefs of others - Freedom OF and Freedom FROM religion.

Let us not forget the basic principles shared by all religions. PEACE, LOVE, GRACE and RESPECT for all that share this planet we call home.

If “marriage” has its roots in religion, I believe, it is up to each individual church to decide who they will and will not marry. It is NOT the governments business to legislate religious policy. It IS the right of every human being to have their love and commitment recognized by civil law as equal in all respect to that of a religious marriage."