• Every time I do a marginalized group based research, I always look for negative research. I look for bad representation, perpetuation of stereotypes, origins of discrimination, etc. Maybe I’m just some gross masochistic fetishizer who copes only by being comfortable in oppression. Or maybe media has only shown me trauma and I feel like being traumatized is the only way to feel like I’m allowed to be myself. Maybe that’s all to my life. You suffer and then die. So yeah, go millennials for wanting to have a great time since we’re not gonna live very long apparently with our beautiful, martyr deaths I guess. (Aka let me be soft and my happy ending is me still being soft and everyone just stops trying to kill me thanks)
• I seriously love IKEA furniture. That’s my dad home. Like fuck my majors, I’ll work for IKEA. I want to major in IKEA building. I like making homes both figuratively and literally. I want the home I build, solely out of pikes and plasterboard and no insulation, to house the laptop where I write my trashy fanfic that is both sappy and a jab at America’s weird sexualization of people’s existences.
• @Chico I want every weeb fanfic writer to read an excerpt from their worst piece, obviously including me. No limits. Own up, y’all.
• Also @Chico, one episode of Naruto. Please. I beg you.

• My son likes to say racist slurs and my daughter loves quirky slave owners: the musical and they say it to my face without flinching or thinking twice aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (obvi i slap my son and tell my daughter im disappointed but still)
• lmao i told my therapist about the books we’ve been reading n hes like well duh ur depressed, its rehashing trauma n it was like he cured cancer b4 my eyes smdh
• i should change my meaning of home to “building ikea furniture correctly on the first try because honestly ????????????”
• education should be accessible but also that accessibility shouldn’t be dependent on ur discomfort with my browness n unwillingness to self-hate so white fragility can die also my mother would’ve been a doctor had it not been the fact her evil adoptive mother told her to fuck off n become a pharmacist instead so i literally dont care how hurt ur feelings are because im anti racist n u dont get to live ignorantly during this program unless you ignore me so please make it clear u dont acknowledge me thnx
• i dislike white fragility, especially within poc because news flash, u never will be considered white so stop subscribing to it
• all movies should be like skyrim where ur not allowed to kill children because killing children shouldn’t be necessary to have empathy imo
• anybody with white guilt can absolve themselves with a monthly amazon gift card or buying me some anime merch because u weebs owe me so much reparation money for opening ur mouths but u can also help poc, especially black people, by taking on the emotional labor by directly fighting the federal government and white supremacy with ur fists n donating to BLACK LIVES MATTER
• if half the room (especially if it’s the poc) roll their eyes/cringe/are taken aback when u say something, maybe consider what youre saying even though you should’ve done that before opening your mouth
• ask yourself why the seminar groups are the way they are
• if one more white vegan says i should stop eating meat, especially seafood, to my pacific islander ass, i will make sure you can’t get those dreads you were probably thinking of getting
• i would not complain if we added another class day to watch more movies (@Chico)

(CW: war crimes/crimes against humanity especially of a sexual nature, imperialist fuckery)

When someone lists aspects and parts of pop culture, music is one of the first answers. We like music because it’s rhythmic, the lyrics can have personal value, and/or it might just make you feel a way you like feeling.

And part of pop culture is what motivates us to like what we like – History, culture, society, and ofcourse, politics. Your family’s relationship with colonialism/imperialism is deeply ingrained into you. You either benefited from the oppression of others, having access to resources to keep you and your progeny healthy. Or your DNA holds generational trauma and your lack of opportunities to be human because you’re not considered human.

What does this have to do with music?

Continue reading →

Looking back at my childhood, antiblack/racist thoughts came before my ability to recognize race the way I do today. I want to say Western media made me think that way and by causation, sure, but conditioning is unconscious. I don’t remember watching much Pinoy television but I assume I did because living in the West, I wasn’t confused on how to work a TV. It came naturally and I don’t know where I learned it.

As someone with sensory overload and high perception, being introspective is a hobby. But psychology makes me uncomfortable because part of psychology is knowing that I don’t know. And most of it seems really obvious. Antiblack sentiment can be transferred via media and pop culture. I was obscenely antiblack as a child and as an adult still dredged in it, though obviously doing my best not to, I had to pick it up from somewhere but I can’t recognize where.

Part of it is probably neurosis as to why I can’t remember but also because it probably wasn’t obvious.

Now I wonder if my kids’ antiblackness, to whatever degree, is also by that unconscious conditioning or because things aren’t being labeled as they were anymore (aka racism being portrayed as an alternative way of thinking instead of being called racism).

How does a parent go about trying to guide their children in media when they as a child couldn’t recognize it either?

“I’m a person of color and I don’t believe racism exists because I have never felt discriminated against.”

Good for you???

Was it your light skin? You cis gender identity? The fact you live in a “good neighborhood?” Your heterosexuality? The weaponizing of your melanin not against white supremacy but the other melanin who don’t know their place?

Probably a combination of these that apply and those I didn’t even mention. (Hint: How marginalized are you?)

I used to envy you – unaware to the subtle jabs at your humanity and personhood. It flies over you instead of through you like the rest of us. You don’t have to feel second class, less human, ugly, weird, other – not normal.

But if I see the car coming at me, I can get out of the way. You didn’t even notice you were crossing the street.

To live comfortably is to live ignorantly. Deny the dangers around you. Laugh at jokes that perpetuate the idea that people like you and me aren’t as good as the Becky with the good hair. (Fuck you, Becky.)

V. S. Ramachandran (The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human) explains that humans, the only animals capable of metaphysical thought, have the most complex humor. Why do we find someone slipping on a banana to be funny? They could have really gotten hurt, breaking a bone or being impaled by a foreign object? Because it didn’t happen. It might be a defense mechanism, knowing the danger is close but not close enough.

So I suppose that danger is closer to me than it is you.

Go ahead and feel uncomfortable.

I wish discomfort was the worst thing I could feel.

• Is it worse to be dehumanized by a racist/white supremacist or a yellow fever fetishist?
• Do people deny the Holocaust (and/or severity of) since America’s concentration camps, though still awful and a crime against humanity, were not as depraved as Germany’s?
• It’s interesting to note the Model Minority myth and it’s cultural impact. Many APIA’s feel “less” within their culture if they don’t exceed expectations. Terms like “white Asian” and “black Asian” by personality and not actual genealogy. It enforces the white/black racial binary that not everyone fits into.
• Not much of the book discussed the inventions and innovations brought over by immigration.