"Kanye has words for days — words that don’t agree with each other, ambiguous pronouns, homonyms, insults, “Strange Fruit” quotes. There are ideas in “New Slaves” and “Black Skinhead” that are echoed in the editorial pages of The New York Times, but Kanye’s songs give them volume and heart. They are a reminder of what music can do — and the isolation artists feel when they say things we don’t want to hear. People need to stop saying hip-hop is dead. There are brave people making it, and we should be proud"
— Kanye West Stands Alone : The Record : NPR (via syreetamcfadden)
This heya is the TROOF :
(via syreetamcfadden)
"Brown boys cannot live on luck alone.
On the whimsy of God, alone.
Your skin, the most dangerous neighborhood to live in.
Your mother’s asphalt tongue lamenting boys
that are not her own.
Born in the year of Trayvon and Troy.
The year the neighborhood watch failed us.
Fresh wounds, the lynch mob nuzzles against the iron pulse.
You, born into this squall, come in the year of wristband warriors,
activism á la mode.
New hoods on white boys in old hoods,
say fight the power, like they just discovered injustice.
Woke up this morning, history on their breath,
cotton mouth. Like this gin fan ever stopped turning."
— Eboni Hogan, “Lucky,” published in Union Station (via nps2013)
(via syreetamcfadden)
"You’re meant to infer that irresponsible sex between gay people is not the state’s concern, because no sad children would result, as they would inevitably from straight people fornicating. The fact that the link between sex and childbearing, and the link between marriage and childbearing, has already been severed for reasons that have nothing to do with gay people is left aside, except to note that when it happens, it is a bad thing: “Irresponsible procreation and childrearing – the all-too-frequent result of casual or transient sexual relationships between men and women – commonly results in hardships, costs, and other ills for children, parents, and society as a whole.” To paraphrase, heterosexual single parents are allegedly terrible for society, so gay people can’t get married. Why can’t everyone just stay in their place?"
—
Proposition 8 defenders have gender anxiety - Salon.com
“To paraphrase, heterosexual single parents are allegedly terrible for society, so gay people can’t get married. Why can’t everyone just stay in their place?” <——that was a glaring point in my read from oral arguments yesterday’s hearing.
(via
syreetamcfadden)
I mean let’s really talk about it!
(via syreetamcfadden)
I’ve thought alot about how overt, how loud and proud I am as a straight person in my support of gay rights. I read an article today where the writer’s thinking was essentially the “i was bullied as a kid too” perspective which is valid, it’s his experience. But I think it’s so important for all of us to come to a support of gay rights, women’s rights, the rights of people of color, the rights of immigrants with the clear understanding that what we are talking about is essential humanity. We are talking about the right of the human being beside you at the supermarket checkout or waiving your thru on that off ramp merge or filing your taxes or healing your child. They do not stop and start for a court or a proposition or your pastor’s Sunday oratory. They do not stop being a human being for your ‘faith’ or for your peer pressure.
Even if I was a cool kid (I was a very cool kid in my head, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought or did but I was also elementally dorky and also really frickin sarcastic and probably a little bit of an intellectual bully *wow stuff has changed soooo much!*) in high school. The truth is that I was raised in a middle(ish) class West Indian environment with a heavy Roman Catholic influence on my values. That means that some how I missed the whole ‘judge not lest you be judged’ part and the ‘love one another’ part in favor of some old testament ish that let me think I could play God with other people’s lives. I mean let’s be clear that this is what we’re doing. We are assuming that we know the minds of the gods we pretend to and then we are attempting to act on their behalf. We can’t get more wrong than that if we can’t manage to follow their basic mandates to judge not and to just plain old Love.
So I’m passionately in favor of gay marriage because I am a person, a human first, not a recovering Catholic or a gender/sexuality definition, and because some of the most human people I’ve met, some of the most humane people I’ve met are gay. They are my dear friends. They are my colleagues. They are my fellow artists. They’ve had my back. They’ve fallen in love with phenomenal people. They’ve fallen in love with shits. They’ve fallen in love with people who love them back no matter what and I can’t imagine anything better than what my parents have or what my sister has or what my brothers have in the love of someone what has you no matter what and I want that for everyone I know, not just the ones who dig the attraction of the opposite.
I support gay marriage because I (despite my personal reservations regarding the institution) really love the idea of people who find partners that they trust and commit to and wish to dedicate their lives to and people that they want to make and raise babies with and people they want to fight with in the supermarket and people they want to care for in the hospital and people they want to visit when they’re dead just to talk about their day. I can get behind that. I can put my whole heart behind love that’s so good you gotta put a bunch of paperwork on it and jump a broom and smash a glass and do a little dance in celebration of it, no matter how your love is formed. (I didn’t plan to say this much at all but there you have it.)
