This is a weblog that I, Ashley Cooper, began writing in 2003. In 2019 the site crashed. All of the content was saved, but the formatting lost. Please forgive the appearance! You can find current content at www.AshleyPCooper.com
This powerful video was made by students at Asheville High School last month. Its byline is “spread love – not only this month, every month. to everyone.”
The students wanted to show it at a school assembly to celebrate Black History Month. They were told they couldn’t because there was too much black power expressed in the video.
#ProBlackIsNotAntiWhite #BlackPrideShouldNotBeControversial #NarrativesMatter #ListenToYoungPeople #TheyKnow
The poor are fighting for the benefit of the wealthy… and don’t realize it. Poor white folks getting suckered again and again, standing up for ideologies that actually go against their best interest and help protect the wealthy elite. Such as folks who may be losing their extended medicaid because of the new healthcare reform. Now is no different than hundreds of years ago. Trumps administration of billionaires and actions to shrink government play right into this story. Just as did Obama and Clinton’s agendas. When will we stop blindly hiding behind politicians and start genuinely standing up for what is right?
Yes. Yes. Yes. THIS!
Keeping certain people invisible, not letting them speak for themselves, not letting them be a part of (or lead) important conversations that effect their future… This is oppression. This is racism. This is whiteness. This is white supremacy. If the words ‘whiteness’ or ‘white supremacy’ turn you off or make you feel uncomfortable, please look at how I am using them in this situation below. It is not about the color of any particular person’s skin. It is not about violent or aggressive racial slurs. It is about perpetuating histories and behaviors of oppression, subordination, marginalization and silencing that continue a narrative that keeps those with power as the ones with power and those who have been stripped of their power, continuously subordinated, disregarded, and often harmed.
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NPR’s “All Things Considered” came to Asheville and hosted a panel about “what happens when a town gets hot and becomes highly attractive to outsiders.” The panel discussed how the city’s popularity “has placed a significant burden on many of the city’s oldest communities by accelerating a gentrification process that prices out older residents in favor of new and more affluent residents.” The panel acknowledged that “the communities that are most impacted by gentrification are largely African-American.” However, no one from the city’s African-American or Latino community was invited on the panel.
Darin Waters, Ph.D. points out, “As a native of this city’s African-American community, I found the absence of these voices troubling. In the case of the African-American community, this experience of exclusion from important conversations has deep historical roots. Throughout the period of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, our community was kept on the social, economic and political periphery. Only in those instances where we were willing to assume great risk were we allowed to speak for ourselves. In most instances, our lives, interests and aspirations, if it was even acknowledged that such existed, were expressed for us, and in most cases by those who were responsible for our community’s marginalization in the first place. The failure to include African-Americans in a conversation that addressed issues that impact their communities so directly only reinforces this history.”
When the audience brought attention to this issue, it was glossed over with justifications that there were people of color on the panel. As if the presence of some minority voices should be seen as representative of all minority voices.
Dr. Waters points out that “by failing to include a representative from the (Asheville) African-American community on her panel, Martin, whose show attracts a weekly listening audience of more than 13 million listeners, not only reinforced false notions about the region, but also perpetuated the sense of marginalization and invisibility that African-Americans have been combating for a long time.”
All quotes from this article, “Were All Things Considered” by Dr. Darin Waters
This morning I was feeling in my body the absence of creative projects that integrate my activism, anger, passion and imagination into creative outlets. I want theater, street art, creative video/photo/journalism projects, “meetings” where we don’t just talk but we enact and play with this BS in embodied ways, imagining creative solutions forward in non-linear ways. I need more fun and creativity in the movement.
After passing through customs, I regretted not talking to the many customs workers in bullet-proof vests, shepherding us through the process. I wondered if the vests were new for them. I wondered what questions I could have asked them to feel into the humanity with which they are doing their job. So much of my sense of hope (and imagination for organizing) rests in the possibility that enough good people who hold jobs that grant them power will resist orders to act in inhumane ways. Targeting and discriminating against people because of their color or religion is not thoughtful and diligent security. It is racist and discriminatory. It is the foundation of Hitler’s regime and increasingly Trump’s regime. If that were the only way for us to insure safety for the people of this country, then there would also be a blanket discrimination against white, Christian men as there are numerous accounts of extreme acts of violence and mass shootings from white, Christian men in this country.
“It was the first time Ali Jr. and his mother have ever been asked if they’re Muslim when re-entering the United States, he said.” – Source: Muhammad Ali’s Son Detained at Airport and Was Asked ‘Are you Muslim?’