March 2012
61 posts
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Dear Brown Men,
Because your melanin boasts favor from the sun, the world has tried to restrain you. Both I and Mother Nature are sorry.
We Have A Serious Problem. #TrayvonMartin →
elonjames.tumblr.com
To raise awareness about the #millionhoodies march and general online campaign I’ve posted the picture below on my social networks. This was the response on one of them.
[REDACTED]: Um no. This guy IS suspicious. I would totally purse clutch and traffic dodge to avoid and I’m not sure of the message here. March for hoodies?
[REDACTED]: I grasp the point racism is rasicm, no dress code needed. But we need to watch our PR and how our message is distributed. The above is not helping or helpful to disseminate the message. It’s an image of a thug in a hoodie. Treyon was not a thug, he was a child and this is the image that should be used. And the main goal is to make the “point” as EASY to grasp as possible. We can march and protest and leverage petitions, but if our attitude is, “read between the lines to get my point”, then we move no one. We also need to utilize the most powerful, personable images we have. This guy is not one of them.
Elon James White (me): Oh HI [REDACTED] I’m the image of the “Thug in a hoodie.” Do you know who I am? Do you know what I do? You said that THAT’s an image of a thug in a hoodie and TREYVON WASNT A THUG. Ma’am, I’m not a thug. I’m an engaged political commentator with a background in I.T. I throw dinner parties and build studios from scratch. But YOU saw a thug in a hoodie.
Do you understand the problem now?[REDACTED]: I’m sure youve very accomplished, and my comments don’t take away from that. But I see a thug in a hoodie. You may not like it, and I dont know you, but I can ONLY see the photo. We disagree. I can stomach that.
Elon: Can you read your own words? The type of thought process you have right now is why Tayvon Martin was stalked and killed. He “looked like a thug” even though he wasn’t. To MANY people a Negro in a hoodie is a thug. That is not right. That is not okay. That is the POINT of the march today. That is the point of the online campaign to wear hoodies in solidarity.
Under no circumstances should I or ANYONE be looked at as a threat because they put a hoodie on.
—-
And by the way? [REDACTED] is black.
I'm going to begin saving all my money for the day a teleportation device is created.
Because right now, if only briefly, I should be in Cape Town, South Africa.
And following that, I’d like to visit Australia or some place in South America.
Soon come.
“Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.”
—Marianne Williamson
“Nonviolence can be your ‘goal’ if you are already sitting in a comfortable house being brought the news of your oppression over television. It can be the normal conduct of rational men if they can believe in the literalness and effectiveness of what they are trying to accomplish by such conduct. But walk, on any night, from one end of 125th Street (in New York’s Harlem) to the other, and count the hundred policemen and figure out the climate of rational conduct that is being cultivated by such an environment.”
—Amiri Baraka, “What Does Nonviolence Mean?” (1966)
“It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
—Oscar Wilde (I’ll have to think on this)
Ranting on the last day of Black History Month. (how coincidental and uncute) →
cocoabutterandbiscuits.tumblr.com
It is important as a writer produce an expansive portfolio because no one wants to be “that writer” who writes about “that thing”. However when you find the one thing that you feel is endangering the living of your sisters, the thing that will send your unborn son to jail, the thing that makes you uncomfortable writing beautiful sentences about ugly happenings -write about that thing. Write about 400,000 times, and then when that is not enough, write again, and do something to make sure that nobody else has to.
In other words, fuck you.
“I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don’t already know, and make me laugh. I don’t care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.”
—Henry Rollins
