I don’t like this expression ‘First World problems.’ It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”
— Teju Cole

Teju Cole

Leadership is not a trait, it’s an ACTION.

Personality Drugs.

“If you are a woman. If you are a Person of Colour. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you’re a person of size, if you’re a person of intelligence, if you’re a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s gonna be really hard to find messages of self-love, and support anywhere, especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror, and you think, ‘Ugh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know that’s not your authentic self, but that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard-earned money and spend it on some turnaround cream that doesn’t turnaround shit.

When you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote. You will hesitate to dream.

For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution. And our revolution is long-overdue.”

-Margaret Cho

[Struggle is Beautiful] because without struggle, there is no growth.

There are two ways of spreading light. To be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton

somethinginmyshoe:

Joanna, and me.

I may not be able to speak to you, for you to hear me but I can write, for my thoughts will not be shifted, misinterpreted nor reflected, but concrete.

jolly

racialized groups also criticize the morality of white women as a strategy of resistance - a means of morally superior public face to the dominant society

Yen Le Espirtu, “We Don’t Sleep Around Like White Girls Do”: Family, Culture, and Gender in Filipina American Lives

On Reading List!

“Is Lighter Better? Colorism is defined as discriminatory treatment of individuals falling within the same ‘racial’ group on the basis of skin color. That is, some people, particularly women, are treated better or worse on account of the color of their skin relative to other people who share their same racial category. Colorism affects Asian Americans from many different backgrounds and who live in all different parts of the United States. Is Lighter Better? discusses this often-overlooked topic. Rondilla and Spickard ask important questions like: what are the colorism issues that operate in Asian American communities? Are they the same issues for all sorts of Asian Americans for women and for men, for immigrants and the American born, for Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, and all the other sorts of Asian Americans? Do they reflect a desire to look like White people, or is some other motive at work? Including numerous stories about and by people who have faced discrimination in their own lives, this book is an invaluable resource for people interested in colorism among Asian Americans.”