It is SO annoying when people go “har har har Islam isn’t a race.” Yeah, Islam isn’t a race, I’m not gonna argue that it is. But I know what you’re saying when you say you hate Muslims. You’re not imagining white, blonde, pale people– you’re imaging brown and black people. You’re imaging POC. And since the average person in the West seems to equate Muslim with Arab, you’re also probably thinking of an Arab.
Islamophobia is racialized. Yes, if you say you hate Muslims, I’m going to assume you’re racist. Fucking deal.
It’s okay not to know what your sexuality and/or gender is. It’s sometimes really annoying not knowing and not having a specific community to be apart of or have specific positivity posts to reblog but that doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong. People can be really shitty about it and try to force you into labels you aren’t comfortable with which isn’t okay. Despite all the negativity and the pressure know it’s okay not to know. It takes time, it’s confusing, it can change multiple times, and it can be a life long process. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing.
okay, so here’s the thing. i’ve got a student prime account and netflix. comes to about $15.91 a month. if i added the commercial-free version of hulu, it would come to $27.90 a month.
basic cable before internet is $64.99 a month. which includes commercials. and infomercials. about a quarter of all television is commercials. which is about $16.25 a month to have someone selling shit to you.
explain how it’s my and my generation’s fault that we’re not falling for the same scam our parents are.
Cable killing itself by not adapting to the market.
If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I don’t fucking trust you
A note:
I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:
Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.
Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.
And then, if you’re asked: no, you haven’t seen anyone residing illegally in the United States. Just people visiting.
Very good very important addition
Essentially, this is the civil society version of a work-to-rule strike.
Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.
In this case:
“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”
“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”
*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*
“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”
And this is correct. You have NOT seen an illegal immigrant, because you have no way of knowing if Jose Fulano is here legally or not. And since you can’t see his paperwork (or lack thereof), and did not personally see him cross the border illegally, you are only answering precisely the question asked.
the DA didn’t make the case for the crime and i went into the deliberation room knowing that. i also knew a half-dozen white orange county folks might not see it that way. the defendant was latino, there was a gang charge in addition to robbery.
sure enough, as we went around the table to give our first impressions, the white ladies used language around “gut instinct” and “he shouldn’t be hanging out with bad people” and the like. others were undecided because there was so much unreliable testimony.
they got to me and i flatly said “i have reasonable doubts.” i stated some of my reasoning and heads started to nod. the next 3 jurors to talk after me were hispanic. they stated that they understood why this might be confusing, and then gave some personal perspectives about growing up in disadvantage neighborhoods, how not everyone is a gangster just because they live there. one white lady said “well, you know, they should really move if that’s the case.”
the discussion opened up and it went right to gangs, right to how the defendant shouldn’t be hanging out with gang members. everyone had an opinion about how the defendant looked, or talked, or that he was drinking a 40 just before the robbery, or that he was related to a gang member. they went right to that.
but that’s not what we were supposed to decide on. we were there for a robbery as the primary charge. a robbery that i very clearly felt the state had not been able to pin on this guy.
so… being the loud mouth that i sometimes am… i interrupted and said “let’s all turn to page 14 in the jury instructions and go through what would make the charge ‘guilty’, line by line, and see where we all stand.”
sure enough, when we focused on the actual charge, and the facts actually required for someone to be found guilty, most in the room agreed it wasn’t there. well, except for two white ladies.
so i, also a white lady, helped to walk them through the list. when “gut instinct” or “it’s a bad neighborhood” came up, i kindly pointed out that those are not facts of the case. when i requested that they use the facts of the case to provide reasoning for their position, they both quietly agreed there weren’t any.
and that’s how, in about an hour, we came to a unanimous decision of ‘not guilty’.
i don’t have experience with the court system. and i don’t watch court room based tv dramas. so i was really a blank slate to all this.
i was taken aback at the very clear inherent bias that some jurors displayed, and all the while realizing they didn’t think of themselves as biased. but i was also taken aback by how focusing on the process, the rules, and the facts quickly squashed that line of reasoning.
this has buoyed me a bit, in light of the actions of the aclu over the muslim ban. but it also feels so fragile. so very fragile.
Even under the best circumstances, American juries are very heavily skewed against black people and other people of color.
Very nicely done, @notentirely. As a young black man who has had some close calls with the criminal “justice” system, I want to say thank you for putting your white privilege to good use.
This is the reason that I, as a white lady, would like to be in a jury someday. Every time I’ve been called up for jury duty, they haven’t needed jurors, but someday perhaps I can be the voice to convince the other white ladies to be reasonable.
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