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“I was stopped and questioned seven times by University police on my way into the physics building,” he says. “Seven times. Zero times was I stopped going into the gym—and I went to the gym a lot. That says all you need to know about how welcome I felt at Texas.”
—

Neil deGrasse Tyson, on racism at the University of Texas, Austin (via sheikhmaat)

See also Sweatt v. Painter (1950)

The case involved a black man, Heman Marion Sweatt, who was refused admission to the School of Law of the University of Texas, whose president was Theophilus Painter, on the grounds that the Texas State Constitution prohibited integrated education. At the time, no law school in Texas would admit black students, or, in the language of the time, “Negro” students.

The state district court in Travis County, instead of granting the plaintiff a writ of mandamus, continued the case for six months. This allowed the state time to create a law school only for black students, which it established in Houston, Texas, rather than in Austin. The ‘separate’ law school and the college became today’s Texas Southern University; the law school is known as the Thurgood Marshall School of Law.

(via paxamericana)

Reblogging because my parents actually went to TSU… And this explains a lot…

In other news I’ve had friends who got rolled up on by campus safety WHILE DOING LAUNDRY in their own dorm because the student that called didn’t think he belonged. Me and my friend who work at the info desk of the STUDENT CENTER are always asked “are you a student here?” despite the name plate that says my name and class year right on top of the table.

Historically white colleges (which is a phrase we don’t use that is a perfect descriptor of a LOT of schools out there, we should make that a thing btw) have a great way of reminding you the most people still don’t think students of color REALLY belong…

(via newwavefeminism)


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sunisup:

Sometimes I hear people say that racism/sexism/etc in culture isn’t important or worth criticizing.  ”Oh it’s just a book,” they say.  ”It’s just a crappy TV show.”  ”It’s just a commercial.”

This argument always baffles me.  It’s like if you put poison into a fish-tank and then say “Oh well I didn’t poison the fish, I just poisoned the water.”  The fish lives in the water, dumbass; it’s completely submerged in and surrounded by the water.  I’m pretty sure that poisoned water is going to affect the fish.

Similarly, we all live constantly immersed in this miasma of information that we call “culture.”  People are not born prejudiced.  We don’t emerge from the womb knowing that all black men are scary thugs, that all Latinas are spicy sexpots, that all Indians are violent savages, that all women are weepy and frail, that all gay men are depraved pedophiles, and that all people in wheelchairs are objects of pity.  We learn these things, usually starting at a very young age, and we often learn them from our culture — the books we read, the movies we watch, and the constant barrage of advertising that we don’t really pay attention to but which still manages to seep into our brains, and which shapes the way we think about the world, for better or for worse.

If you want to save the fish, you need to purify the water.


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babyminaj:

you’re not allowed to like the same stuff as me because i hate you


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“I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all ‘crazy.’ I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of “crazy” in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.”

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