This Is Racism.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

[…] America’s demographics are changing, and they’re changing quickly. By 2055, there will no longer be a single racial or ethnic majority in the United States and 14 percent of the country will be foreign born, according to the Pew Research Center. Forty-three percent of Millennials are people of color.

Let’s be clear: This is scaring white voters. White people believe that they are more often the victims of racism than black people, according to a 2011 new study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The research also found that white voters perceived social progress for people of color to be much swifter than it actually is.

The authors wrote, “These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality — at their expense.”

Research has also established that as U.S. demographics shift, the pro-white and racist attitudes of white people become more apparent, according to a study from New York University and Northwestern University. The same researchers also found those who read about these demographic changes often are generally more supportive of conservative policies and more likely to identify as conservative.

Throughout history, there are many examples of how the racism of white voters has been mobilized to favor a candidate for president. We saw Barry Goldwater and President Richard Nixon employ the Southern Strategy, which took advantage of white people’s anxieties about the economic and social advancement of people of color. Writing in Slate, Jamelle Bouie describes this pattern of progress and white backlash, starting with the Reconstruction:

Like clockwork, white Americans embraced a man who promised a kind of supremacy. We haven’t left our long cycle of progress and backlash. We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.

We have also seen these fears manifest themselves overseas as European far-right political parties with anti-immigrant sentiments win historic victories.

The fear of white voters — the fear we will no longer be at the center of American politics and culture, having our needs tended to first, and the fear that we will be asked to acknowledge our role in white supremacy and to stop doing harm to people of color, whether it be violence or perpetuating racist stereotypes — has always been there. Now, we need to acknowledge that it is largely what motivated Trump voters. A majority of Trump supporters said they saw black people as “less evolved” than white people, according to a Slate survey with a sample of 2,000 non-Hispanic white people.

When we say that class is what takes a Trump voter from dangerous to misguided and confused, we are condescending to low-income people living in rural areas. By doing this, the media takes away their agency and suggests they didn’t know any better. But they know exactly what they have done. […]

Yes, they do know exactly what they’ve done, and they all have their little justifications for doing it, and it all goes back to the comfort of being on top of the people pile, being assured that yes, of course white people are superior, and you have every right in the world to stomp all over those others. My state, nDakota, had a great deal to do with Trump being elected, and I can’t even begin to express how uncomfortable I am right now, how much anxiety and fear fills me whenever I look at any white person in this state, knowing there’s a high probability they voted for that xenophobic, homophobic bigot, open racist, a rapist, a sexual predator, a con man, an open fraud, a sociopath, pathological liar, climate change denier and ignorant asspimple. Much like my country, my home [state] has disappeared, swallowed whole by intolerant assholes who think they are owed the right to stomp on other people, to oppress, to marginalize, to own, to rule. There just aren’t enough fucks in the universe for those of you to whom nothing was more important than your shallow need to control other people, to safeguard your racism. *spits*

The full story is at Think Progress.

Local White Nationalists Gleeful.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign elevated the voices of explicitly white nationalist movements, including the online haters in the alt-right, who had previously been largely shunned from the larger conservative movement.

It’s no wonder, then, that many of these white nationalist activists celebrated Trump’s victory last night as their own, expressing hope that the president-elect would fulfill their dreams of deporting undocumented immigrants, continue to wake “white racial consciousness” and hire like-minded people to staff his administration.

Via Right Wing Watch and Think Progress.

So It Begins…

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talks to reporters after the Senate Republican weekly policy luncheon at the Capitol in Washington, July 8, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talks to reporters after the Senate Republican weekly policy luncheon at the Capitol in Washington, July 8, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said repealing the Obamacare health insurance system is a “pretty high item on our agenda” for the new Congress that was elected on Tuesday, calling it the “single worst piece of legislation” from the first two years of the Obama administration.

McConnell told reporters he would like to see bipartisan comprehensive tax reform, and that border security should also be high on the to-do list. He expects president-elect Donald Trump to send the Senate a Supreme Court nominee soon, and to review environmental regulations put in place by Obama, including on coal.

All those people who could only get healthcare through ACA (affordable Care act), well, look just how fast the republican thugs want to yank that threadbare rug out from under you. Gosh, having citizens who have affordable healthcare, oh, how horrible, it’s unthinkable! Much better for people to be sick, and who gives a fuck if they die? Certainly not republicans. The only thing republicans truly excel at, besides inciting fear based on racism, is holding a spiteful grudge. They just can’t wait to destroy anything President Obama did, and if it makes people suffer, hey, all the better!

And Arkansas senator Tom Cotton just can’t wait to built that wall, and to force everyone to turn over immigrants.

Via Raw Story.

Right Wing Terrorism Awaits.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

[…] Already there are militias preparing for “civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton. They are convinced “the Islamic State, or agents sent by Mrs. Clinton, or both, may soon descend” on them. At Trump rallies, supporters warn of coming riots nationwide and “another Revolutionary war” to remove Clinton from office.

This rhetoric can be dismissed as fantasies stewing in the overheated imagination of reactionaries who envision race wars and their neighborhood going “up in flames” every time a centrist Democrat is elected or Black people march for justice. But there is another grave risk likely to explode after a Clinton victory: right-wing terrorism, particularly mass shootings.

Over the last year, as white male anger congealed around Trump, there has been a lull in mass shootings, about 60 percent of which are carried out by white men. While a causal relationship between his campaign and domestic terrorism can never be proved, there are reasons to think the drop in mass shootings is linked to Trump’s candidacy as well as it is more probable there will be an outburst of right-wing terrorism after a Clinton victory.

The foremost reason is recent history. The day after Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Keith Luke, a 22-year-old neo-Nazi, went on a rampage of murder and rape in Brockton, Massachusetts, saying he was “fighting for a dying race.” Over the next two years there were at least seven other cases of deadly right-wing political terrorism carried out by white men, with targets including a Planned Parenthood clinic, the Holocaust Museum, an IRS building, and massacre in Arizona that nearly claimed the life of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. There were other aborted political terrorist attacks or ones that ended in the death of the gunman only. The common thread was attackers were motivated by anti-government sentiment, often fueled by the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

[…]

The violence is already bubbling up. One examination of the public Facebook pages of more than 240 active militias found a significant spike in recent activity of members vowing insurrection and violence if Clinton wins. These groups also wax and wane according to who is president. Under George W. Bush, the number of Patriot groups, which include many militias, declined by 85 percent from the peak of the Clinton era, to a low of 131 in 2007. Within five years, under Obama, the number of Patriot had grown an astonishing 10-fold.

[…]

If anything, the danger of right-wing terrorism is greater than ever. Much of that aggression has been channeled into Donald Trump’s campaign, which may account for the drop-off in mass shootings. That’s why his defeat is likely to see a rise in attacks. The militias preparing for insurrection are a vector of future terrorism. Shane Bauer’s eye-opening look into these militias found they walk “a delicate line between stoking its members’ paranoid fears and fantasies of rebellion and holding them in check.” Some militia leaders admitted they expelled or even reported members to authorities whom they suspected were planning to kill Muslims or assassinate politicians.

[…]

Trump has convinced millions of heavily armed Americans that if he doesn’t win, then it will be the end of America. And with many followers going around with an itchy finger on the trigger, convinced war is inevitable, how long before some of them start shooting?

Arun Gupta’s full article is well worth reading. Our interesting times are about to get more interesting, and much more terrifying.

Cops, nothing better to do.

Mariza Ruelas with her children. Photograph: Courtesy of Mariza Ruelas.

Mariza Ruelas with her children. Photograph: Courtesy of Mariza Ruelas.

When cops aren’t busy murdering people of colour, they’re busy mounting sting operations to harass them out of existence. All that blue service, so much to be proud of, and not to leave our so-called justice system out of things, piling on charges and punishments into a great big pile, just the sort of thing a single mother of six can handle without blinking. Right.

A single mother could face three years in jail in California for selling homemade ceviche and chicken stuffed fried avocado on Facebook after law enforcement conducted an undercover operation and accused her of running a food business without a permit.

The story of Mariza Ruelas’ charges has gone viral since the Stockton woman spoke out about police targeting her in an online investigation of a local Facebook group that members used to share recipes, organize potlucks and sell dishes.

The misdemeanor charges of “operating a food facility without a valid permit” and “engaging in business without a permit to sell” have drawn widespread criticisms of California police and health inspectors and raise fresh questions about how law enforcement agencies use social media for surveillance.

[…]

Ruelas said she helped run the 209 Food Spot group on Facebook, which is named after Stockton’s area code.

In December, someone who contacted her through the group asking for ceviche turned out to be an undercover San Joaquin county investigator who conducted a “sting” on behalf of the district attorney’s office.

She and five other users of the page faced citations for two misdemeanors, but Ruelas was the only one to refuse to sign a plea deal. She said she would be happy to do community service and pay a fine, but she didn’t want a misdemeanor on her record.

San Joaquin County deputy district attorney Kelly McDaniel told the Guardian that Ruelas used the page to sell food after her initial arraignment, resulting in a total of four counts that add up to a maximum of three years and a possible fine of more than $10,000.

Ruelas said she sold her signature chicken stuffed fried avocado dish to try and raise money for her legal costs.

Mariza Ruelas said she sold her signature chicken stuffed fried avocado dish to try and raise money for her legal costs. Photograph: Courtesy of Mariza Ruelas.

Mariza Ruelas said she sold her signature chicken stuffed fried avocado dish to try and raise money for her legal costs. Photograph: Courtesy of Mariza Ruelas.

That looks pretty tasty to me. This was a local thing, not someone who was out to get rich, it was about building community, sharing food, and recouping the costs a bit. I know Stockton, or I used to. It’s a place widely avoided by those who don’t have reason to be there or stay, it’s a dangerous place. Lots of crime. I guess it’s much better to spend all that tax money and resources on hunting down community minded women. Great job, Stockton cops!

Full story here.

North Carolina Boasts Over Voter Suppression.

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An early voting location in Greensboro, NC. CREDIT: AP Photo/Skip Foreman.

North Carolina, almost making nDakota look good. The NC GOP has been working hard on voter suppression, and they are getting a result, an unfortunate one.

After Republican leaders mounted a concerted and illegal effort to make it harder for African Americans to vote in North Carolina, the party apparatus celebrated on Monday that fewer African Americans have voted in North Carolina this year.

In July, a federal appeals court struck down an “omnibus” election law, passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory (R), writing that it was “hard not to come away with the conclusion that North Carolina’s lawmakers wanted to get caught engaging in unlawfully racial discrimination.” The court found that the GOP legislature had “requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices,” and then “enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.” In an unsuccessfulappeal, the state actually claimed that its efforts would instead increase minority turnout.

After that failed, North Carolina Republicans used their two-to-one edge on electoral boards to slash early voting options and force long lines at the few early voting locations in urban centers like Charlotte, Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Winston-Salem. Unsurprisingly, almost 9 percent fewer African Americans took advantage of early voting than had in 2012.

Full story here.

In other bad shenanigans news, a Colorado amendment would take power away from voters:

A state constitutional amendment on Tuesday’s ballot will give Coloradans an opportunity to make it much harder for voters to change their laws.

Amendment 71 — known as “Raise the Bar” — would mean that in order to get an amendment on future ballots, 2 percent of voters in each of the state’s 35 senate districts would have to sign a petition. In addition, it would increase the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment from 50 percent to 55 percent.

The amendment is being backed primarily by business interests, including a massive cash infusion from the oil and gas industry.

Opponents say that passing Raise the Bar will make it nearly impossible for citizen-led initiatives to get on the ballot. Colorado is characterized by widely divergent districts. A policy popular in deeply red Colorado Springs would have trouble gaining 2 percent of voters’ signatures in liberal Boulder, for instance, and vice-versa.

“One part of the state could hold veto power over the rest of the state,” said Jessica Goad, communications director for Conservation Colorado. “There are so many issues where this could really stymie changes.”

One of those issues is oil and gas regulation.

A pair of proposed amendments that would have restricted oil and gas development in the state narrowly missed garnering enough signatures to appear on the ballot this year. Under the rules proposed by Amendment 71, they would be virtually impossible to mount.

We have all been bought and sold, tossed about as disposable pawns in corporate gaming. Oh yay. Full story here.

Oh Yuengling.

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Gay bars in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are boycotting Yuengling after the beer company’s owner, Richard “Dick” Yuengling Jr., came out in support of Donald Trump. Last week the fifth-generation businessman gave the Republican nominee’s son Eric a tour of a Yuengling brewery located in Pottsville, Pa.

“My father’s going to make it a lot easier for business to function,” the younger Trump claimed during a news conference. “We’re going to do it right here in the U.S.”

“Our guys are behind your father,” Yuengling responded. “We need him in there.”

Following the owner’s endorsement, Rep. Brian Sims, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator, called on gay-owned businesses in the Keystone State to stop serving the company’s products. Forbes described Yuengling as boasting a “cult-like status” in the 19 states — primarily in the East Coast and Southwest — where the beer is distributed. Even President Obama is a fan.

But the buck has to stop somewhere, as Sims wrote on Facebook.

“One of the most prevalent brands in the gayborhood and in LGBT bars across the Commonwealth, is using our own dollars to back a person and an ideology that says that our lives … matter less,” he said. “More to the point, those dollars are being used right now to give power to his bigoted messages attacking our black and brown neighbors and all of the women in our lives.”

“Our communities know a thing or two about voting with our dollars,” Sims added, “and I won’t be using my hard-earned dollars to give power to any company or person who hates me. What about you?”

Following Sims’s call to arms, several gay bars swiftly dropped the brand.

[…]

Many of Yuengling’s most loyal drinkers have joined the call to #DumpYuengling. Todd Bird, who lives in Louisville, Ky., regularly drives 90 miles to Ohio for a drink of his favorite beer, but he said those days are over.

“Supporting racist, misogynist nut-job Trump is the end of the line for me,” he wrote on Twitter.

The money power of the queer community is not something to be scorned, as many companies have found before, and have had to make a decision to not be such bigoted asswipes, when they’ve seen what has happened to their bottom line. Yuengling has quite the following, and to have people dump it cold is going to hurt, even if Dick Yuengling hasn’t quite figured that one out yet. He will, eventually.

Full story at The Advocate.

A thumbs-up, a grin, and a corpse.

Leaked photo of Omar Rahman's body and a North County Police Co-Operative officer (Screen capture).

Leaked photo of Omar Rahman’s body and a North County Police Co-Operative officer (Screen capture).

Just in case anyone was getting warm and fuzzy feelings about cops here in uStates. This photo was leaked, not much information about that right now, out of St. Louis, Missouri, of a cop giving a happy thumbs up over the corpse of Omar Rahman, who was shot and killed in August this year. I don’t really care what anyone did, or how any given cop might feel about any given person, this is unconscionable, no matter how you slice it. The St. Louis cop shop isn’t saying much about this, claiming their crime scene camera is missing, along with any hard copies. I find that interesting, given how cop shops everywhere are always plaintively crying about restrictive budgets and never having enough money. Cameras are expensive, I know, I have one, and it’s not even close to one of the high ends, just a Nikon D90. It was expensive enough, and lenses, well, anyone with a camera can bend your ear about lens lust and the costs which leave most of us in a state of drooling dreams. A camera used for forensics can’t be a cheap one, there has to be an initial lay out for a good camera body, and a number of lenses would be required. Not the most expensive ones, I’m sure, but at least two good workhorse lenses, and one macro lens, I’d think. Rather odd for something like that to go missing. I’ll be generous and assume they have more than one, they must have been using something since August. The old saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words. I think that applies here.

Full story here.

F*ck Your Feelings.

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Oh, university, where you go to embark on great learning, new experiences, opening that mind! Supposedly, anyway. Seems many people at university go there with their underdeveloped brains set in cement. Today, it’s the University of Alabama. At least it’s not Ndakota again.

Students and administrators were welcomed by a sea of hateful Trump-inspired chalk messages outside Manly Hall at the University of Alabama on Friday, AL.com reports.

Manly Hall is home to the departments of Religious Studies and Gender and Race Studies and the messages clearly targeted the people who frequent the building.

The racist and anti-feminist messages were written in chalk outside the building and read, “Build a freaking wall #YUGE,” “Trump 2016,” “F*ck your feelings,” and “#Feminism is cancer.”

A faculty member of the department shared the photos on Facebook with a message that accompanied the post. Juan P Black Romero, who is a part-time instructor of “race, gender, and Latino immigration politics” at the university wrote:

Another of those hateful mornings at my office. They have become too common by now. Less than a week from the election and the push for the open display of racial difference that is becoming more desirable if not acceptable. This messages are warnings and threats to all of us who want a better world for all. These messages set the limits of the achievements of our society up to this point; these messages tell us that we have gone too far in our claims of treating each other as human beings and working together. This is what is being offered as a reality in this election with Trump, this limitation and eradication of anything that doesn’t build race and fulfill the desires of Whites.

I can’t say I am angry anymore; I am scared, but I won’t stop, ever, doing my job. If anything, I can say that I am more inclined to love. Today, I will join a group of scholars and students that deal with these issues of difference – race, gender, ageism, class, disability, and more. We will work on this, I am sure; work for a better world.

Well said, Mr. Romero. We certainly have our work cut out for us.

Via Raw Story.

Making Native Sense of Disney’s ‘Moana’.

The Maui skin-suit.

Anne Keala Kelly has an excellent column up about Disney’s Moana, and the Thanksgiving release date. A brief excerpt:

…If the promotional trailer is anything like the film, Disney’s about to get even richer by exploiting and mocking us in deeply genealogical and spiritual ways—turning Tutu Pele into an ugly lava monster and Maui into a ridiculous, clowning sidekick. The noted psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer Frantz Fanon was so on the mark when he said, “…Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”

Disney has reduced us and our world to a cartoon at a time when our political future is hanging in the balance, when Hawaiians absolutely need to be heard and taken seriously, not distracted by or silenced for entertainment. Disney is trying to do to our culture and identity what America is doing to our land and nationhood: we are being carved up, sold off, and drained of our mana.

Since the Maui-Skin-Suit debacle, Disney’s 21st century iteration of the white supremacist ideology that informed people like British Major General Horatio Gordon Robley, a proud collector of Maori heads, and the guy who tried to sell a Hawaiian kupuna skull on eBay, I’ve been thinking in metaphors. I’m looking at what’s happening right now, but looking, too, at the horizon, at what’s coming toward us, imagining what might follow, hoping that whatever it is Hawaiians and all Pacific Islanders can face it together instead of letting it further divide us.

I have no doubt that Disney’s “Moana” will materially and psychologically aid and abet the colonial project of Indigenous erasure and removal. …

Anne Keala Kelly is the Native Hawaiian award-winning filmmaker of “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i. She is also a journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and on Pacifica Network and Al Jazeera. www.annekealakelly.com www.nohohewa.com

The full article is at ICTMN.

Being used as costumes just got worse…

Every year, there’s always a slew of  “Indian” costumes, and plenty of thoughtless, ignorant people to use us and our cultures as a shallow dress up day. Social media on Halloween is especially bad for Indians, as you see one asshole after another, most often white, tweeting or facebooking their oh so cool gonna be an Indian for a day costumes, bristling with defensiveness over their right to appropriation, and how awful us damn Indians are for speaking out about it, that’s just bullying poor white people who aren’t doing anything wrong!

This year sees yet another celebrity who thinks Indian dress up is cool and fun:

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ - MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ – MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

UPDATE: Apologies proffered by Duff and Walsh. Walsh’s, um, apology, trotted out the standard “I meant no disrespect, I have nothing but admiration!” yada, yada, yada. No, you don’t have admiration, and that’s not wanted anyway. There are, of course, a number of people who are upset any apology was offered, tweets at the link. Some non-native people have also posted photos of themselves dressed up as “Indian” and have posted to #NoDAPL. As for Natives who play dress up, Dr. Keene addresses that at Native Appropriations.

This year, 2016, sees a new twist on the bigotry and appropriation. It seems some people think it’s really cool to depict those NoDAPL water protectors for what they are – lazy, shiftless, drunken injuns living on handouts from all those hard working white people:

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These are Ndakotans, people we are surrounded by. I can’t say anything right now, this is one lousy way to start the day. You can read more here.

Facebook’s Ethnic Affinities.

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You can’t scuff a toe these days without overturning something unsavoury when it comes to Facebook. ProPublica has found FB’s ethnic affinities, and how their advertising service allows you to exclude said ethnic affinities, which are not at all the same thing as race, no, no. As usual, FB dodges and runs away from providing an actual answer, as they habitually do when caught once again with their metaphorical pants around their ankles.

…The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an “affinity” for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. (Here’s the ad itself.)

When we showed Facebook’s racial exclusion options to a prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he gasped and said, “This is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”

[…]

Facebook says its policies prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.

“We take a strong stand against advertisers misusing our platform: Our policies prohibit using our targeting options to discriminate, and they require compliance with the law,” said Steve Satterfield, privacy and public policy manager at Facebook. “We take prompt enforcement action when we determine that ads violate our policies.”

Satterfield said it’s important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs. For instance, he said, an advertiser “might run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry.”

He said Facebook began offering the “Ethnic Affinity” categories within the past two years as part of a “multicultural advertising” effort.

Satterfield added that the “Ethnic Affinity” is not the same as race — which Facebook does not ask its members about. Facebook assigns members an “Ethnic Affinity” based on pages and posts they have liked or engaged with on Facebook.

When we asked why “Ethnic Affinity” was included in the “Demographics” category of its ad-targeting tool if it’s not a representation of demographics, Facebook responded that it plans to move “Ethnic Affinity” to another section.

Facebook declined to answer questions about why our housing-categories ad excluding minority groups was approved 15 minutes after we placed the order.

The full story is at ProPublica.

This Is NOT Your Word.

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There’s a professor at Suffolk University in Boston who seems to think that certain words simply cannot be used by those inferior brown peoples. This is shameful, full stop. Yes, I know teachers need to be alert for the possibility of cheating, but it’s quite obvious that is not what happened here.

A Latina student at a university in Boston said that her professor on Thursday handed back her paper and told her, in front of the class, “This is not your language.”

After looking at more of the comments the professor left on her literature review, Suffolk University sociology major Tiffany Martínez noticed that the professor had circled the word “hence” and had written, “This is not your word,” underlining “not” twice.

And at the top of her paper, the professor had written, “Please go back & indicate where you cut & paste.”

[…]

Martínez, an aspiring professor who was born and raised in the Bronx, told BuzzFeed News that her professor had called her to the front of the senior seminar course on Thursday to receive her graded paper when she made the language comment.

“She spoke loudly enough that students at the back of the room heard and asked if I was OK after class,” Martínez said.

She felt terrified after the incident.

“I spent the rest of the class going back through every single line, every single citation to make sure that nothing had been plagiarized, even though I knew I hadn’t,” she said.

Later that day in a blog post titled “Academia, Love Me Back,” Martínez wrote about her experiences as both a first-generation college student and US citizen at what she calls “an institution extremely populated with high-income white counterparts.”

“My last name and appearance immediately instills a set of biases before I have the chance to open my mouth,” she wrote.

“As a minority in my classrooms, I continuously hear my peers and professors use language that both covertly and overtly oppresses the communities I belong to. Therefore, I do not always feel safe when I attempt to advocate for my people in these spaces,” she added.

This incident certainly makes me wonder just how many other people have been stomped on and rendered suspect by this professor over the years. Such openly racist behaviour has no part in decent society, and definitely should not be part and parcel of a person’s education.

Martinez also described how the incident made her doubt her capabilities as a scholar.

In this interaction, my undergraduate career was both challenged and critiqued. It is worth repeating how my professor assumed I could not use the word “hence,” a simple transitory word that connected two relating statements. The professor assumed I could not produce quality research. The professor read a few pages that reflected my comprehension of complex sociological theories and terms and invalidated it all. Their blue pen was the catalyst that opened an ocean of self-doubt that I worked so hard to destroy. In front of my peers, I was criticized by a person who had the academic position I aimed to acquire. I am hurting because my professor assumed that the only way I could produce content as good as this was to “cut and paste.” I am hurting because for a brief moment I believed them.

Buzzfeed has the full story. One thing I know already: Ms. Martinez will make an outstanding professor, and is already much better than Prof. Not your word.