Is This What The Bullies Want?

I am beyond saddened by this news story in yesterday’s Toronto Star. A 9 year old girl in Calgary, a recent legal arrival to our country from Syria, has committed suicide. The paper reports:

 

A Calgary Syrian refugee family is dealing with the tragic death of their 9-year-old daughter, who died by suicide after being bullied at school. Amal Alshteiwi is shown here in a screen capture of a YouTube video. (SCREEN CAPTURE)

 

A Calgary Syrian refugee family is dealing with the tragic death of their 9-year-old daughter, who they say died by suicide after being bullied at school.

Aref Alshteiwi discovered his daughter Amal’s body March 6, according to Sam Nammoura, co-founder of Calgary Immigrant Support Society. Nammoura has worked with the family, and details of Amal’s death were relayed to him by the parents.

Police conducted more than a dozen interviews following Amal’s death, and found no evidence of foul play, according to Calgary Police Service media relations.

The family escaped war in Syria more than three years ago as government-sponsored refugees.

Amal’s parents told Nammoura that Amal had been coming home from school upset, telling them she was being bullied. She had been fine until around six months ago, they told him, when she moved to a new school and began having issues in math. Nammoura said they told him that’s when the bullying started — Amal was called stupid and ugly on a daily basis by several classmates.

The parents told Nammoura they raised the issue with the school, but that their daughter didn’t get any help. She went to school happy, they told him, and came home sad. However, Nammoura wasn’t aware of the issues Amal was having until after she died.

In an emailed statement, the Calgary Board of Education said it is working with the school’s staff and students “to try to understand if there were concerns or issues.”

“The school is closely working with both students and families to heal from this tragic event and come together as a community,” the statement read.

The family eventually moved schools to try to get Amal away from the bullying. Before she left, Nammoura said Amal was told by her bullies that moving wouldn’t fix anything.

Four days after she switched schools, Amal’s father found the girl dead in her room.

Story by Rose Saba, Star Calgary

She’s a beautiful girl who had a whole life ahead of her. She’ll never get her first kiss or go to the prom. She won’t graduate high school or go to college or fall in love and have children of her own. And she isn’t unique. This is what happens where hate lives and it sickens me. Is this what the bullies want? Are there really people in my country who would celebrate this loss? It is my hope that the the people who bullied Amal feel shame and remorse at what has happened and will carry that forward instead of the hate. Some will, but much work needs to be done to remove this cancer of fear and hate of otherness from our society. Lives are depending on it.

Oooer, A Psy-Op Blender! Wait…

Wow, Coach Dave is on one hell of a trip. His latest lunatic screeth is quite long, and so full of batshit, it’s hard to know where to begin. What’s all the fuss? The latest royal wedding – it’s a major psy-op to enforce the worst of the worst: the blending of white people with :gasp: people of colour!

Daubenmire, who has declared that he is “proud to be white” because “white, heterosexual, Christian” men represent America’s only hope for survival, has fretted about the threat of white genocide, and has fumed that interracial marriage weakened this nation “because multiculturalism is spiritual AIDS [that] has brought an infection into what was once a great Christian American culture,” said that the marriage of Prince Harry to a woman of “mixed blood” is an attempt to corrupt the pure bloodline of House of Windsor.

Yes, Coach Dave is a fully paid up member of the White Patriarchal Assholes™. He’s also astonishingly dense, as we shall see.

“Let me just lay it out there, because most people won’t say it because they don’t want to sound racist,” Daubenmire said while wearing a literal tinfoil hat. “Prince Harry’s wife is half-black. Now, wait a minute. That ain’t that royal bloodline lineage there, is it fellas? Isn’t there a little bit of mixed blood coming in there?”

Pretty much everyone on the planet has a someone in the woodpile who comes as a bit of a surprise. Now royalty everywhere does have a perturbing history of inbreeding in an attempt to keep things within the right class, but I’d happily bet there are some right interestin’ people in those bloodlines. Royalty has also spent a lot of time breeding like out of control bunnies, and there was seldom much concern about all those babes born on the wrong side of the blanket, and there were a fucktonne of them, too. History, Coach Dave. Try learning some.

“Did you see who performed the service?” he said. “Was it the Bishop of Canterbury or some official WASPy guy? Was it? Did I miss something? Or did we see the ultimate—umm, how do I say this?—a blending of the races; one new world order, one-world government, the blending of the [races] in the House of Windsor coming together for the first time.”

Bishop Curry is the ultimate blending of the races? How on earth do you figure that one, Dave? It’s not as if Bishop Curry was getting married to Harry. You might be unaware, Dave, but there have been people of colour in England for a very long time. A really long time. There have even been people of colour at the royal court, going waaaaaaaaaay back. I did hear that Bishop Curry preached about love, and I rather expect that’s what got under your skin. As for the whole new world order blahblahblah blending of races in the House of Windsor, uhhhh, it was one wedding. I don’t think it even qualified as a herald to all that nonsense.

Daubenmire insisted that since Prince Harry is sixth from the throne and very unlikely to ever become King of England, he was allowed to marry Meghan Markle in order to send a message endorsing mixed race relationships.

Oh, all that idiocy has been downgraded to an endorsement now. Gotcha. Who the hell knows who is going to end up on the throne? I can’t be arsed to care. As it stands, Elizabeth might live to be two hundred years old, given her death grip on that throne. People aren’t influenced by this kind of thing as much as you seem to think, Dave. For most people, it’s a matter of falling in love, and skin colour doesn’t enter into it.

“I’m going to tell you something, if there was any chance that Harry was ever going to be King of England, do you think they really would have let him just choose any woman he wanted?” Daubenmire said. “Of course not. So what’s the message that is being sent to us? … Is it a psy op that now, all of a sudden, sixth to the throne, he ain’t never going to be king, now it’s okay for the crown to be diverse?”

Yes, I expect Harry would have been allowed to marry who he wanted to marry. Even royalty has to make concessions to the current reality. If there was an obstacle, Harry could always choose to abdicate, it’s been done before. No, it is not a “psy-op”. Harry is not “all of a sudden” sixth in line. As for the crown being diverse, yeah, it’s just fine. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be.

RWW has the full story and video.

Indian Country Today Is Back!

Who Will Be Our First Founding Member? The new Indian Country Today is launching a membership drive and an auction. Top bid will be forever known as Indian Country Today’s: “First Founding Member.”

Who Will Be Our First Founding Member? The new Indian Country Today is launching a membership drive and an auction. Top bid will be forever known as Indian Country Today’s: “First Founding Member.”

Indian Country Today is back! The NCAI has taken over, and this is grand news.

From September through February I have heard about the importance of saving Indian Country Today. So many people across Indian Country had the same idea:

What if … What if we all contribute?

What if I step up to make certain Indian Country has solid, accurate, fair reporting?

Is it worth it to save this voice? A national media platform for Indian concerns?  And how much will it take?

Yes. Yes. And the answer is a lot  — or perhaps a few tax-deductible dollars if we all contribute together.

We are building a new Indian Country Today on a public media model. We will have some advertising, but most of our resources will come from members, tribes, enterprises, and non-profits.

We need you.

We are launching a membership drive and an auction.

The membership drive will solicit help from our “members” as $100 Founding Members, $500 Sustaining Members, and $1,000 for Premier Members.

Unlike public media we don’t have nifty gifts as a thank you. No t-shirts. No coffee mugs. Just a better news report. We want to use the money to build our news operation, a multimedia reporting platform about what’s going on across Indian Country. We’ll stretch your dollars by partnering with other organizations, and amplify our reporting by letting others repurpose our editorial content.

We will serve.

This is great news, but to work, ICT needs help from people. If you can drop a few dollars into the fund, please do, and if you can’t do that, please, please, spread the word, get it out everywhere! You can read more by Mark Trahant at Indian Country today, or go straight to the membership drive. This is so very important, it’s vital for Indigenous peoples to have a voice.  Also, be sure to check out the new edition, there’s all manner of interesting reading!

ETA: I should point out that it’s possible to donate $5.00 to the membership drive, which is all I can manage right now, but I’ll be dropping more fives each week.

Black People Excited About Black Panther: BAD!

A dude by the name of Ben Shapiro is all manner of upset about people being excited about Black Panther. Naturally, he misses the point, by a whole damn universe. Most of his screeth* seems to be a lament over the lack of gratefulness being displayed in this excitement. Black people should be grateful, dammit, for all the great and wonderful things white people have done for them! On your knees, slaves! Oh, er…stop being so excited! I’m not going to be able to get everything in, it’s a fairly long screeth, so full of wypipo gone wrong that it’s extremely difficult to take, and that’s a serious understatement. Shapiro is one of those fucking idiots who make you ache for the ability to reach through your screen and smack him into last Sunday. And I’ll just add that I’m over the top excited about Black Panther m’self, but I can hardly share in the excitement born of such outstanding representation, because I’m not black. That said, I don’t have any problems understanding The Excitement.

“Everyone in the media is talking about the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity, or at least since Caitlyn Jenner became a woman—a transgender woman—and that, of course, is the release of ‘Black Panther’. It is so deeply important,” Shapiro said, mockingly.

No, not one single person is talking about the movie as if it were the most important thing ever in the history of humanity, you sniveling dipshit. Black Panther is deeply important – look at how damn long it’s taken to get a mainstream movie comprised of a mostly black cast, especially when no one is able to say that tokenism has gone out of Hollywood.

“We’ve heard it’s deeply important to millions of black Americans, who after all were not liberated from slavery 200 years ago and liberated by the civil rights movement with federal legislation, have not been gradually restored to what always should have been full civil rights in the United States. None of that has mattered up till they made a Marvel movie about a superhero who is black in a country filled with black people. ‘Blade’ was not enough. ‘Catwoman’ with Halle Berry, no. OK, Wakanda is where it is,” Shapiro said.

He continued sarcastically, “This is the most important moment in black American history, not Martin Luther King, not Frederick Douglass, not the Civil War, not the end of Jim Crow, none of that, not Brown vs. Board—the most important thing is that Chadwick Boseman puts claws on his hands and a mask on his face and runs around jumping off cars in CGI fashion—deeply, deeply important. Black children everywhere will now believe that they too can be superheroes who jump off cars in fictional countries.”

Oh my. Hey, sniveling dipshit! You left a little something out – all those things? They wouldn’t have been necessary if white people deciding that forcibly kidnapping people and putting them into slavery hadn’t been done in the first place. You don’t get fucking points for taking centuries to correct your massive mistakes. As for the the movies Blade and Catwoman, you wouldn’t have noticed that outside the main characters, most of the cast was comprised of white people. That’s because you expect to see white people, as far as you’re concerned, that’s only right and proper. What a fucking surprise that people of colour would like to see themselves reflected in the same way, and not always have to settle for tokenism.

“We heard this about Barack Obama when he was elected, too. ‘Now that Obama has been president, black Americans will feel like they too can be presidents. It’s a transformative moment.’ Yet, all we hear now is that America is deeply racist and that black people are still systemically discriminated against and that black people are still victims in America society. So, it turns out it didn’t mean anything,” Shapiro said.

Yes, it was a transformative moment. Just like the portraits too, because generations of children to come will be able to read about a black president, and they will see black people represented in the sea of white in the white house. (White, white everywhere.) Having such transformative moments in regard to representation and the hope of future achievement is not a magic fucking wand, you wannabe Voldemort. Whitemort? Yeah, I’ll go with that one. It does not magically erase systemic racism, localised bigotry, or victimisation. Those are still with us, and unfortunately, with the Tiny Tyrant, we’re seeing a vicious, cancerous rise in hatred. The difference such transformative moments make cannot be accurately estimated; they represent hope, strength, and change. They represent inclusion and acceptance, and you just have to try and take that away, by demeaning black people in every way your tiny, atrophied brain can come up with. You aren’t worth spitting on, Mr. Shapiro.

“Sorry to break it to you folks, Wakanda is not a real place,” Shapiro said. “It does not exist.”

Well, thank you ever so much for that whitesplaination, Mr. Shapiro. I’m ever so sure that not one black person could possibly figure that one out minus your help. What a flaming doucheweasel.

You can read the whole thing, and watch video at RWW.

*Screeth: screed + froth.

A Diverse Eye Chart.

Click for GIANT size.

Click for GIANT size.

This amazing eye chart was put together by George Mayerle, in 1907.

This fantastic eye chart — measuring 22 by 28 inches with a positive version on one side and negative on the other — is the work of German optometrist and American Optometric Association member George Mayerle, who was working in San Francisco at end of the nineteenth century, just when optometry was beginning to professionalise. The chart was a culmination of his many years of practice and, according to Mayerle, its distinctive international angle served also to reflect the diversity and immigration which lay at the heart of the city in which he worked. At the time it was advertised as “the only chart published that can be used by people of any nationality”. Stephen P. Rice, from the National Library of Medicine (who house this copy presented here), explains just how throughly thought through the different aspects of the chart were as regards the aim to be as inclusive as possible:

Running through the middle of the chart, the seven vertical panels test for acuity of vision with characters in the Roman alphabet (for English, German, and other European readers) and also in Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew. A panel in the center replaces the alphabetic characters with symbols for children and adults who were illiterate or who could not read any of the other writing systems offered. Directly above the center panel is a version of the radiant dial that tests for astigmatism. On either side of that are lines that test the muscular strength of the eyes. Finally, across the bottom, boxes test for color vision, a feature intended especially (according to one advertisement) for those working on railroads and steamboats.

You can also see and download this wonderful chart here.  Via The Public Domain.

Repeating: 6 Banal Defenses of Columbus Day, And How You Should Respond to the Moron.

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

Photo courtesy starpulse.com

We’re going to go back in time a bit, to an article Simon Moya-Smith wrote in January this year. He’ll help you out with Columbus apologists. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Glaring contradictions. Stupid fucking lies, and good ol’ American bullshit.

Yes, folks today we are talking U.S. history, and there’s nothing more politically correct than American History. It’s RIFE with soft language to spare the feelings of fuckers who desperately want to believe their homesteading great-grand-pappy wasn’t a murdering, raping, thief.

OK. So today let’s hit on the numbskullery surrounding Columbus Day. “Why in January?” you ask. Well because Colorado State House Representative Joseph Salazar, a democrat, is currently working to repeal the foul thing from the state’s list of recognized holidays. And lately he has received an onslaught of hate mail from dipshits who don’t seem to understand the seemingly elusive concept of logic and facts.

Recently, Rep. Salazar has been forwarding me these messages, and they range from fucking hilarious to seriously fucking delusional. They’re more on the seriously fucking delusional side, though.

So, I thought I’d share with you some responses you can use against the common, hackneyed pro-Columbus Day arguments you will surely continue to encounter for as long as you engage the willfully blind. Feel free to share the following with your friends or family, or maybe just that fucker who sits at the end of the bar incessantly defending the bullshit American narrative as written. (Remember: The American narrative HATES to be fact-checked. So fact-check that goddamn thing any time you can.)

Okey dokey, here’s what you can say to those dullards spewing trite claims and arguments about Columbus and Columbus Day, and let us start with the most common and least accurate:

[Read more…]

Repeating: The Lie That Is Columbus Day.

ict_editoon_100716-2

© Marty Two Bulls

Other posts from last year:

The why of the “holiday”.

A Rapist, A Murderer, Deserves No Holiday.

Columbus Didn’t Kill Us All: Taino Daca.

For Indigenous Peoples Day, Write to Columbus.

Moron Bingo!

SlayTV.

Slay

Screengrab.

Enter SlayTV.

Slay was founded by Sean Torrington, a former Goldman Sachs project manager, and his husband Terry; after Torrington lost his job in 2010 , he decided to follow his passion for filmmaking by creating some YouTube web series based on the lives of black and brown LGBTQ people. They then created an app to curate content from Youtube and the web onto one platform. And Slay has been growing ever since.

SlayTV officially launches on May 15 online, on iOS and Android devices, as well as on Roku, Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and other services.

Torrington hopes to empower content creators to become “sustainable entrepreneurs” who generate their own revenue. “Slay is not only digital TV, it is a production company and an ad agency,” he tells Out. “We will build campaigns around content on our network to get it branded.”

That content includes a wide variety of programs in various formats, for and by queer people of color, such as: the docu-series Other Boys NYC, a 50-part series exploring narratives of queer and transgender men of color; No Shade, inspired by Torrington’s coming-of-age in New York; and the romantic sitcom Love @ First Night, based loosely on Sean and Terry’s relationship.

Out has a nice introduction video. SlayTV. SlayTV on youtube. Great content, wonderful people, go explore!

Marriage Equality Reduces Teen Suicides.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Wenig.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Wenig.

A new study reveals something remarkable: marriage equality cuts down on teen suicide. This shows just how much social justice issues matter, and that they can be, all too often, a matter of life or death. LGB teens are prone to suicide, given that they often find themselves with no support system, no safety net, and see a bleak future in which they can all too easily envision never being accepted, and never having the same human rights as other people.

A new study found some stunning results: After same-sex marriage became legal on a state level, the rate at which young people attempted suicide in that state dropped significantly.

Published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, the new study used data from the hundreds of thousands of students who participated in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) between 1999 and 2015. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, and Boston Children’s Hospital looked at 32 different states that legalized same-sex marriage in that span of time and found a consistent drop in teen suicide attempts in each state after marriage equality arrived.

Overall, the suicide rate attempt among all high school students dropped 7 percent in the year after marriage equality arrived in a state. For students who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or who were still questioning their orientation — a group whom the suicide attempt rate is much higher — the drop-off in suicide attempts was 14 percent after the arrival of marriage equality.

Because the effect was specific to each state as it legalized marriage equality, it cannot be dismissed as mere correlation. In fact, during the same span of time, suicide rates in the country were actually increasing across almost all age groups.

[…]

Regardless, the study offers a profound addition to the wealth of research already documenting the impact of what psychologists call “minority stress.” For example, a study published earlier this month in Australia found that LGB people who had strong social support and affirmation had normative rates of depression and anxiety, while only those who experienced rejection or had past experiences of trauma experienced higher rates. Several other studies in the U.S. have found that simply living in more conservative communities can have a negative impact.

Republicans, who so often tout themselves as being so very “pro-life”, but could not care less about the lives or health of women, and support the death penalty, are also staunchly against marriage equality. The fact that equality helps to maintain life is one which will, no doubt, not sway them in the least. For all their claims of pro-lifery, they don’t seem to be the least bit concerned with LGBT people dying. It’s rather difficult to not get the feeling they are cheering behind closed doors, so I imagine this news will be met with a renewed determination to kill marriage equality. Seeing as the Trump Regime is all set to rescind the Obama administration’s guidance protecting transgender students, which is little more than a license to harass and bully transgender kids, I’m sure an uptick in violence against transgender people and suicides will be seen. This is not a good. This is evil, absolutely evil, repulsive behaviour that any decent person should be ashamed of, and be willing to fight against, tooth and nail. Once again, the rethuglicans prove they are people who are pro-death, and they will go to any length to ostracize those they deem subhuman, and hope they will be driven to death, one way or another.

Full stories at Think Progress: one, two.

Star Trek: Discovery.

Courtesy of CBS.

Courtesy of CBS.

I should come out from under my rock more often, I had no idea that yet another Trek was in the works. It really is the show that won’t die, and it seems like diversity might actually make some inroads this time around. We’ve finally come a long way from the days of Spock’s ears being airbrushed out. Took long enough.

As casting rumors are confirmed, Star Trek: Discovery is boasting one of the most diverse casts in the franchise’s history—and we’re not just talking about the aliens.

The latest news is that out actor Maulik Pancholy will play Dr. Nambue, the chief medical officer. There’s no news whether the character will be gay, but no worries: Discovery will feature an original gay character for the series, Lt. Stamets, who will be played by Anthony Rapp.

That’s just the beginning for Discovery’s crew. We already know that the lead character will be played by The Walking Dead’s Sonequa Martin-Green, who is only the second woman to lead a Star Trek series (after Voyager) and the first woman of color. Another ship in the series will be captained by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Michelle Yeoh.

[…]

Rumors are still circling about a premiere date for Discovery, but CBS speculates sometime this year—possibly the summer.

Via Out.

NO DAPL Roundup.

Malia Obama (Pinterest)

Malia Obama (Pinterest)

Malia Obama has chosen to stand with Standing Rock.

A group of 100 people gathered in Park City to protest the revival of the project by new U.S. President Donald Trump. Despite freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall, Malia Obama joined the protester who were holding up signs that read: “Exist. Resist. Rise.” and “Impeach corporate control,” according to the Daily Mail.

Along with protesting the construction of the pipeline, which will disturb sacred grounds and introduce contaminants into the local water supply, the group was protesting the festival sponsorship by Chase Bank, which is invested in the pipeline. The rally was held in front of the Chase Sapphire on Main lounge.

Courtesy MSNBC via YouTube.

Courtesy MSNBC via YouTube.

Chairman Archambault on MSNBC: ‘President Is Circumventing Federal Law’.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II was more surprised at the rapidity with which Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda purporting to speed up the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline than he was by the act itself.

“We were prepared for President Trump take a run at everything we have accomplished in the last two years,” Archambault told Tamron Hall on MSNBC on Wednesday January 25, the day after Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum attempting to move DAPL along. “This nation better start bracing itself for what’s to come if in the first four days we’re witnessing him using an executive order to circumvent federal laws. It’s not right, and it’s something we better get ready for. I was disappointed that it came this soon, because we had worked so hard for the last two years.”

The tribe wants closer study of the pipeline’s potential effects on water supply, sacred sites and treaty rights, he said, and Trump is trying to do an end run around such statutes as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

“The troubling thing is that this president is circumventing federal law,” Archambault said. “We have Treaty rights, we have water rights with our Winter’s Doctrine, we have NEPA.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline Will Create Just 35 Permanent Jobs. Don’t Believe the Lies.

For those who still insist fossil fuels are the future, the Trump administration represents a new day for some old ideas. In an early sign of things to come, the president showed his faith in big oil when he signed documents Tuesday pressuring federal agencies to support construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. Each of these projects faced enormous protests and was put on hold by the Obama administration because of legitimate environmental and due process concerns.

Congressional Republicans frequently howled at far less heavy-handed exercises of executive power under the previous administration. Today, they applaud Trump’s move on the mistaken premise that these pipelines are good investments. Not only will these projects not create long-lasting jobs – as CNBC, not exactly an anti-corporate mouthpiece, has noted: “Pipelines do not require much labor to operate in the long term” – they will further delay the inevitable transition to clean, renewable energy our economy needs and the American people demand.

Standing Rock Chairman Archambault Sends Strong Letter to Trump.

Editor’s note: Reaction was swift and strong when President Donald Trump signed a series of Presidential Memoranda and Executive Orders designed to move the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) forward and revive the Keystone XL pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe responded immediately, and on January 25 Standing Rock Chairman Archambault wrote a letter to Trump explaining the legal constraints, the support that the Environmental Impact Statement and the tribe have, and the need for a leader-to-leader meeting. The full text is below.

DAPL Profiteers Steal Marty Two Bulls Designs.

You’ve probably seen and shared at least one of the many brilliant political cartoons by Marty Two Bulls at some point in time. Marty Two Bulls—an artist from the Oglala Lakota Nation—has been drawing political cartoons with great success for many years. His work has long been a staple on the pages of ICTMN. He’s known for bringing clever humor and hilarious imagery to hot, controversial issues: most recently the anti-DAPL movement in Standing Rock.

But now, you might see his work in places it shouldn’t be: dozens of t-shirt sellers who are hoping to make a buck from the #NoDAPL campaigns have ripped off Marty Two Bulls designs and been using them to sell t-shirts of their own with no credit, profit, or acknowledgement offered to the artist. Now, Two Bulls has taken the matter into his own hands. In addition to filing dozens of reports to stop production of the rip-offs, he has decided to sell t-shirts of his own.

The design thieves are mostly from overseas with no connection to Native country.
“So far I caught over 20,” Two Bulls said, “I go online, I search terms like #NoDAPL and Water is Life on Facebook, and there they are.”

Marty is an amazingly talented artist, and one of the best political cartoonists in the world, he’s brilliant. Please, if you want to show support for Standing Rock, take the time to make sure your item is coming from the actual artist. Most artists aren’t rolling in money, and this theft hurts, one more than one level. Marty is trying to do something for his people, and if you want to help, and like his artwork, please buy from Marty Two Bulls.

Defining Diversity, Whitesplaining Edition.

Who, me? I'm diverse, I swear!via YouTube.

Who, me? I’m diverse, I swear! via YouTube.

On Saturday, two days before the national celebration of Martin Luther King Jr., Knoxville state Rep. Roger Kane opined that just because the Tennessee General Assembly is mostly white and male, that does not mean it’s not diverse.

Sigh. Here we go. Again.

“Women have actually gone down and minorities have gone up,” Kane said, talking about UTK enrollment. “Well, that’s just trading spaces. It’s really not creating diversity.”

Right. Women and minorities have absolutely nothing at all to do with diversity, no. It’s all about the white guys.

“If you look at this panel, that’s in front of you, we look rather homogeneous. But we’re incredibly diverse! We really are,” Kane said of the 12-person panel that consisted of 10 white men, one white woman (Sen. Becky Duncan Massey), and one African-American man (Rep. Rick Staples).

Insert a slight, nervous laugh here. Kane continues on in his diversity definition.

“You see me as a white, middle-aged man. But my mother’s Jewish, my father’s Catholic, and I’m a Baptist. Does that not make diversity?” Kane asked. 

Not really. It means you have a mixed religion background.

“I grew up in Houston, probably one of the most diverse towns you will ever see,” Kane said, accurately, mentioning the city’s large Chinese, Vietnamese, gay and black populations. “And that’s the school I went to. Does that not add to my diversity? But you see me as a white, middle-aged man, that’s all you see. But we’re so much more than that!”

People see a white, middle aged man because that’s what is there. Living in a high diversity town and going to a high diversity school doesn’t change the fact that you’re a white man. Diversity is not about personality or character traits.

Kane continued digging his hole, saying that UTK’s diversity office — which the Legislature defunded last session — doesn’t really show the true diversity on campus, because a lesbian Filipina only defined herself as that and not also as “a woman, she’s college-educated, she’s funny, she has black hair — those are all diversity things.”

“She had forgotten all of those things because in her strive to be diverse, she had honed in on two things, and that’s it,” Kane ended bitterly.

Oh for…yeah, no. Being a woman, a lesbian, and Filipino all matter when it comes to diversity. Once again, this is not about personality or character traits. I’m pretty sure you don’t get to count hair colour as a “diversity thing”.

These are the conservative white men who are in charge of education all over.

Via Nashville Scene.