Cops, Bigotry, Cops, Bigotry…

Louizandre Dauphin’s selfie after he was pulled over by police (Photo: Instagram)

First up, for a change, a story from Canada, where a man was confronted by cops for reading while black.

Louizandre Dauphin of Bathurst, New Brunswick snapped a selfie of his arched eyebrow for Facebook with red and blue police lights flashing behind him. The former high school English teacher pulled had over by the water to read a book by C.S. Lewis. All he wanted was a nice quiet place to read his book. But he had been pulled over.

The officer said that they had received several calls from concerned citizens who said that they saw a “suspicious person” on the wharf. He left his teaching job and now serves as the city’s director of parks, recreation and tourism, which might be why he sought out the city’s wharf as a place to read. But his appreciation of nature isn’t why he thinks people called to complain, The Province reports. He thinks it is because he’s black.

Full Story Here.

Shutterstock.

The Seattle Police Officers’ Guild, the union that represents the city’s police officers, has scrubbed its social media accounts less than a week after suggesting the Black Lives Matter movement was to blame for the fatal shootings in Dallas, The Stranger reported.

Not only was the guild’s website offline, but a Twitter search for its account came up empty as of Monday, as seen below: (See image at linked story.)

As the Seattle Times reported, the guild’s Facebook page was also taken down, just days after a post commenting on the Dallas attack by saying, “The hatred of law enforcement by a minority movement is disgusting” and adding the tag #Weshallovercome, a reference to the Civil Rights Movement protest song.

Geekwire published a screenshot of the post prior to its deletion, which can be seen here:

Guild President Ron Smith, a detective with the department, said at the time that the post was criticized because people took it out of context.

Oh. Always a good sign when someone decides to go full court Sam Harris, and scream context. There really isn’t any complex context to consider here.

“Somehow some folks were offended that police officers are disgusted at the level of violence directed toward law enforcement officers across this country by the vitriol spewed by a small segment of society,” he said.

So, people of colour are a small segment of society. Interesting. If that’s the case, why are all these white bigots so damn upset, screaming at how white people are a minority and will soon become extinct? You don’t get to have this both ways. Also, Mr. Smith, if people of colour are such a tiny segment of society, why in the hell are almost all extrajudicial murders by cops happening to PoC? Something smells, don’t you think? Full Story Here.

Teen confronts white couple over racial statements (Facebook/screen grab)

Live Facebook video caught a Texas couple shouting racial slurs at an African-American teenage girl.

According to Media Takeout, the girl was dining with her family after church at Chester’s Hamburgers restaurant in San Antonio and began streaming the encounter live on Facebook after the couple made racial statements.

“So, Facebook, this is what racist people look like,” the girl announces to her followers.

Both families tell each other to “shut the f*ck up” before the white man begins calling the black family “god damn n*ggers.”

“You’re a f*cking n*gger!” the white woman wails.

“This is what racism looks like!” the teen recording the video shouts back.

“F*ck you, honky!” one of the women in the black family exclaims.

“I can be a honky! I can be cracker too!” the white man yells.

“Take your n*gger ass back to Africa!” the white woman says.

“I was born right here in America!” one black woman points out.

“My ancestors owned your mother f*cking ass,” the young white woman squawks. “My ancestors owned your ass, bitch.”

The woman adds, “Black people don’t belong in America.”

[…]

They call us monkeys and n*ggers and nobody is paying attention. You know, I had to record it to let you all see. Because it’s real in San Antonio too. For everyone who thinks it’s not real, it’s real in San Antonio.”

“That’s the problem though,” she notes. “You can’t fight these people because that’s how you end up in jail.”

And right there is a prime reason that white people need to be good, strong allies in this fight. Don’t be silent. Don’t turn your back. Don’t look down. Don’t tell yourself “this isn’t my fight.” It is your fight, it’s the fight of every thinking, decent person, and a lot of the time, you won’t find yourself up against stone asshole racists, like the ones quoted above. You’ll be facing nice people who think they are good, and decent and kind. And for the most part, they are right in that self-assessment. But they don’t know enough, and they don’t think enough. I found myself in that situation at the pain clinic yesterday, laying on a slab, half naked, with a needle in my spine. For a moment, I considered letting the remark about those poor cops slide, then thought “no, you cannot do that.” So I didn’t. Talk, even when you think “eh, not the right time”, talk anyway. You never know when you can get another person to think deeper, and they’ll end up wanting to know more.

Full story here.

Lemon Clover.

Lemon Clover flowers (oxalis stricta), from Kengi, who says it is quite tasty. Click for full size.

Yummy.

From Giliell. I don’t see them often, but that looks like a Clearwing moth. Beautiful! Click for full size.

Swamp: when humans can’t read signs.

From Lofty:

Cycling up the linear path gracing our local Torrens River I stopped for a breather at a storm water retention pond which sported a large sign reading: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE DUCKS.

First a couple of moorhens idled by, then the pigeons staggered over for a look. Soon the entire population of the pond had to come and check me out. Tough luck for them for I was a literate human. Click for full size.

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The Daily Bird #52

Fluffy Sparrow.

Driving While Praying.

Shutterstock.

MARY ESTHER — A 28-year-old woman was taken to the hospital for evaluation after driving into a Mary Esther house Thursday morning.

The woman told Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office deputies she was praying at the time and had her eyes closed, according to the OCSO.

The Fort Walton Beach woman was traveling eastbound on Marcia Drive when she failed to stop at a stop sign, went through an intersection and into the yard of a home on Miramar Drive.

She tried to back out but got stuck in the sand, the OCSO said.

She was cited for reckless driving with property damage.

No one in the house was injured.

Given all the petty broken window laws we get stuck with, how did driving while praying get a miss?

Via WPTV and NWFdailynews.

Your Ass WILL get run over! Period!

It would be nice if those public servants of ours were at least smart enough to keep their bigotry off social media. Do they think no one is going to read it?

A Columbia Fire Department captain is out of a job after taking to Facebook and threatening to run over Black Lives Matter activists who were protesting raising the Confederate flag at the state house by a secessionist group, reports the Charlotte Observer.

Capt. Jimmy Morris, a 16-year veteran of the fire department, was dismissed after his superiors were alerted about two Facebook posts he wrote Sunday night.

As reports came in that protesters had blocked the I-126 freeway late Sunday afternoon, Morris wrote: “Idiots shutting down I-126. Better not be there when I get off work or there is gonna be some run over dumb asses.”

One hour later he updated his Facebook page with, “Public Service Announcement: If you attempt to shut down an interstate, highway, etc on my way home, you best hope I’m not one of the first vehicles in line because your ass WILL get run over! Period! That is all….”

[…]

Jenkins also noted that Morris, who is white, works out of a firehouse that serves a predominately minority neighborhood and that the post by the fireman prompted threatening calls to the station house.

“We are honored and proud to live and participate in the communities we serve,” said Jenkins. “Unfortunately, a member of the Columbia Fire Department has discredited the reputation of the men and women who serve this Department.”

I suppose we should be grateful that these assholes are sidelining themselves.

Full story here.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Carolina, some officers claimed to have been served chicken wings with sauce so hot it was inedible, and were subjected to rude comments by employees. Naturally, people are talking:

“Hey Zaxby’s, You let crap like this happen in your restaurants???” posted Facebook user Kim Gordon. “The manager and staff should be fired! ‪#‎AllLivesMatter‬ ‪#‎Youshouldbeashamed”

“I hope the thug fools who were working last night and treated these law enforcement officers with such disrespect gets FIRED!” posted Facebook user Linda Susan Dellinger. “I will Not ever go near zaxbys after this.”

“Fire their disrespectful black asses IMMEDIATELY,” posted Facebook user Randy Webb.

Full story here.

Oh For…No. No. No. No.

Starcasm.net – TLC Promo Photos

Earlier, Vincent Schilling had a column up at ICTMN about Native headdress showing up on a reality show. A short while later, Vincent Schilling was able to talk with the designer about this, um, travesty. There’s nothing quite so rabidly defensive as a white person busy appropriating another peoples’ culture and traditions, all while getting it spectacularly fucking wrong in every possible respect.

Before we get to the spectacular fucking up, a word about traditional Cherokee clothing. (The groom in the show claims Cherokee ancestry. If that’s so, I’d think he’d want Cherokee clothing, but I guess “Native American” will do.) Cherokee people were never big on feathers, and they certainly never had anything even close to Plains Indians’ headdresses. There were a few various ways that men chose to style their hair and decorations, but when a headdress was worn, it was in the style of a turban, as in the painting of Sequoyah.

You can read up on traditional Cherokee dress here, here, and here. On to the monumental ignorance and stupidity.

Gypsy dress designer Sondra Celli created a Cherokee-themed dress and a Native American-influenced headdress for Hunter and Dalton Smith on the reality series My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.

In an exclusive interview with ICTMN, Celli said that the ‘Native-inspired’ headdress was made by her design team, and the headdress for the groom — who claims Native ancestry — was purchased from a Native American company over the internet.

Celli told ICTMN because the groom was Native American, she did not alter any of the groom’s outfit and that he approved of the bride’s outfit.

“Because he is Native American we made sure we bought a true Native American headpiece made by Native Americans. We bought him a true Native American shirt made by Native Americans. I made sure it came from an authentic Native American company.”

*Resists impulse to pound head into wall* If there is one thing to get into your skull if you are not an indigenous person, it’s this: there is no such fucking thing as “Native American” anything. Repeat over and over until you get it. Indigenous peoples (many of whom are not American) can not be conveniently dumped into a pail of whitewash so we come out with every nation believing the same, having the same traditions, the same clothing, the same housing, and so forth. We are all different. There just isn’t enough eyeroll in the universe for this shit.

What about the bride’s wedding outfit?

She is a gypsy. Hunter is a cowgirl and would not give up her boots. I told her, ‘I am going to Sondra Celli you up’ and I made her a Native American-inspired dress … and [the groom] was real cool with her being her. I am very respectful of the fact he is Native American. This is what they told me — please understand that I am just the designer.

I made sure we did not touch his headpiece and it stayed exactly the way we bought it. The shirt is exactly the way we bought it. We ordered it on the Internet from a Native American company.

I made her headpiece, and the girl who works for me studies Native Americans. She put all of those feathers on. Like we say on television, it is native-inspired. We do not say this is a Native American costume. This is a Sondra Celli gypsy rhinestone costume that is inspired by Native Americans.

Emphasis mine. I’m just going to wander off and scream for a moment.

What is your response to Native people that say this is appropriating Native culture?

I think the fact that their clothing is so beautiful and the detail is so beautiful, they should be accepting of the fact that we borrowed from their clothing. I said “inspired” through the whole show. I never said it was authentic Native American clothing, not once.

Um…Yes, you did say that. You wouldn’t shut up about all the authentic “Native American” clothes. Right up there ^.

I don’t find a problem with putting something inspired from the beauty of Native American clothes on someone who is not Native American. They should be honored that we think their clothing is so beautiful, that we took some of the colors from it.

Honoured. Right. Oh, all you did was borrow colours! Well, that makes it okay.

This is a TV show, so you have to take it for what it is. I do not believe this dishonors people. I would never do that.

That’s convenient. You don’t believe this dishonours anyone, so of course, it doesn’t. White magic.

I’ve taken the idea of kimonos from Japan and they are rhinestoned. I never say they are Japanese kimonos. I say they are inspired.

Every designer from all over the world has taken ideas from Native Americans.

Oddly enough, we notice things like that.

The PBS Museum just had an exhibit, Native American designers that have come into the modern world made Native American inspired clothing with plastic metal who are getting ideas in a way from our world and made really cool clothes with beading. I was blown away.

I think they were inspired by what we do in the modern [world].

Fuuuuuck me. I really do have to scream now. Yeah, just a few of us Indians are crossing the bridge into the modern white world, where of course, we’re stealing ideas from white modernity, while the rest of us are back home in primitive Indian land, everyone dressed the same, all in a tipi, of course. It’s absurd to think that Indians are a part of the world. Christ, she makes it sound like we live in Faerie or something.

As much as I admire their craft, I think they should admire the fact that I took the ideas that they have and turn it into something modern for someone who is not Native American.

Um…oh hell, I give up. White people, please get a fucking clue. In the comments, Beatrice pointed out something I should have noted in the first place:

As if distilling all the variety of different heritages of Roma people into “over the top trashy clown show” wasn’t offensive enough…

This isn’t just spectacularly fucking up Indigenous peoples’ cultures, it’s spectacularly fucking up that of Roma culture as well. I guess all is fair game for a white designer. If you can call pasting rhinestones all over something design.

Vincent Schilling’s article is here. TLC’s ‘Gypsy’ Wedding Is Offensive to Romani, Too.

This is who I am, I shouldn’t be ashamed.

Signal boosting an important message.

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There are more videos here. Watch, listen, share. This is important. No, it’s more than that, it’s crucial. Face time makes all the difference. Many people don’t know a transgender person, which makes it easy for them to hold on to their bias. Sharing these videos will help people to understand that bias, and overcome it. This is a very simple way to help enact great change. Please, do your part.

Here’s Lookin’ At You.

From Giliell, a stunning shot. Click for full size.

28.

Shortly after taking office in 1913, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson delivered a phonograph address signaling a change in the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes. Whitehouse.gov

Shortly after taking office in 1913, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson delivered a phonograph address signaling a change in the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes.

This “message to all the Indians,” played on a phonograph donated by Thomas Edison, was part of a traveling expedition to each of the nation’s 169 recognized Indian reservations. Wilson’s voice echoed from the phonograph during ceremonies held beneath the American flag.

In his speech, Wilson quoted Thomas Jefferson’s words from a century earlier, predicting that a day would come when the red men would “become truly one people with us.” One hundred years later, America was “nearer these great things than hoped for, much nearer than we were then,” Wilson said as he boasted about the successes of assimilation policies like land allotments, agricultural training and the more than 30,000 Indian children enrolled in government, state and mission schools.

“The Great White Father now calls you his brothers, not his children,” Wilson said. “You have shown in your education and in your settled ways of life staunch, manly, worthy qualities of sound character.”

Wilson acknowledged “some dark pages in the history of the white man’s dealings with the Indians,” but he claimed the “remarkable progress” of the Indians was proof of the government’s good intentions.

“Many parts of the record are stained with the greed and avarice of those who have thought only of their own profit,” he said. “But it is also true that purposes and motives of this great government and of our nation as a whole toward the red man have been wise, just and beneficent.”

The message, part of an “Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian” organized by Philadelphia department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker, was played on every Indian reservation. Joseph Dixon, education director at the Wanamaker department store, led the six-month, cross-country expedition, which left Philadelphia in June 1913.

Dixon sought to “obtain a pledge of allegiance to the government from all the North American Indian tribes,” the New York Times reported at the conclusion of the journey, in December 1913. Dixon had traveled 25,000 miles and visited 189 tribes in an expedition he said “had planted new ideals in the lives of the Indians, and would give great impetus to education, industry and Christianity among them.”

[Read more…]

Here Comes the Sun.

From Kengi:

The photo includes Sunspots 2562, 2563, and 2564. The three sunspot groups form a triangle on the left side of the sun with 2562 on the bottom, 2563 on the top and 2564 on the left. There’s another sunspot just coming around further to the left.

Taken through a ND-5 thin film (.002″ thick) polymer filter. That’s ND-5 in astronomy, not ND-5 in photography, which are not the same. Remember, never look into the sun without a proper astronomical solar filter.

Click for full size.

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Lemon Clover.

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Yummy.

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Swamp: when humans can’t read signs.

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The Daily Bird #52

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Driving While Praying.

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Here’s Lookin’ At You.

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Here Comes the Sun.

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