I Just Loved These Photos

Look at these photos. And these. These ones too. Don't forget about these. And these photos of queer women and men couples of color being in love. So much pride. This makes me smile. It's all so beautiful. Can you feel the pride tonight?

The Pride festivals are over - or just about - but that doesn't mean we can't have pride and love ourselves year-round. And right now, I have so much pride it's making me all choked up. So enjoy.

For Michael Brown

One form of discrimination I've never talked about on this blog - or almost never talked about - is racism. And that's not okay, because if we don't talk about it, racism won't end. So this is for Michael Brown.

For Michael Brown

Just another black boy

That's the justification

The defensive statement

For the devaluing of his life

But Darren Wilson didn't mean to...

To murder

That's what it was

And don't you dare say differently

Devalued, dehumanized, demeaned

All the jokes about Ferguson

At the expense of Michael Brown

And every other black boy who has been killed

Don't you realize that their lives matter?

THEY ARE PEOPLE

And they were murdered

The violence needs to end

"Why do you need to make everything about race all the time?"

Because that's the way YOU made it

That's the way WE made it because we are white

It IS about race

Don't you dare say white privilege doesn't exist

Not when we have those boys' blood on our hands

And Michael Brown's death goes unavenged

For Michael Brown

For the sake of every black person I know,

Every person whose voice is silenced

Their blood spilled because of their race

For every person who has ever had the word "n***er"

Screamed at them from a car

For those people

For Michael Brown,

The boy whose life is devalued because he was black

The boy whom white people STILL see as less than human

The violence needs to END

Some Jokes Aren't Funny

Black people are not monkeys. It's incredibly racist and wrong to say that they are or to compare them to monkeys. This is common sense, right?

Well, apparently some of the boys in my physics class don't have common sense. Or basic human decency, for that matter.

We were talking about what would happen if you shot a banana out of a cannon and how it might be possible for a monkey to catch it. And then we simulated it in real life, using a Beanie Babies monkey attached magnetically to the ceiling via a screw in its head, an electron wire, an air cannon, and a marble.

Our only problem was, somebody needed to be tall enough to actually reach the ceiling so they could attach the toy to the magnet. The two tallest people in the room were both boys, one white and one black.

And of course, this fact seemed to give the white boys in class an excuse to be racist turds (not all of them, but some) without consequence. You can guess what happened.

I hate when people are like this. What happened today sucked and should never, ever be allowed, but it did and it was. And, like the rest of the non-racist part of the class, I have no idea what to do about it. I've seen examples of prejudice, both systemic and in the form of "individual acts of meanness", at my school on a regular basis, but I've never known how to respond - even if the prejudice is  directed at a group that I'm part of.

And when the prejudice is directed at a group that I'm not part of, I'm frozen. So, because some jokes are really not funny, I want to do something about it. Any ideas? What would you have done?