Red Light Politics
Welcome to my short form Tumblr blog. My name is Flavia Tamara Dzodan, I am a business developer, writer, public speaker, ideas instigator, content creator, media facilitator and trend watcher living in Amsterdam.
This Tumblr is about the spaces and intersections between politics, culture, race and gender matters with some humor and pop culture thrown in the mix.
My long reads blog is Red Light Politics.
I also blog at Tiger Beatdown.
Read my posts at Persephone Magazine.
If you would like to know more about me or hire my services, visit this page .
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The person behind this blog
I am on Twitter, you can follow me
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Noted Elsewhere
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Here it is: The first episode of The Hero Report.
I hope you’ll enjoy it and share it widely!
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Free money
Someone dumped a GIANT pile of change out by my bus stop today. Like, several feet across — everything from pennies to dollar coins, and...
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GPOM every morning before work.
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Resting Angel on Flickr.
[Image: A statue at a cemetery of an angel cuddling with a bunny.]
Last night I heard a strange thumping noise and... -
“Speaking from the perspective and the tradition of lesbians of color, most if not all rationales for excluding transsexual women are not only...”
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Ageism against middle aged white women
To be honest, I had to walk away because I’m trying hard not to be reactionary and give...
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I am WIRED.
THIS IS THE BEST.
Sidebar. I am glad there is no one else in the lab today because I am grooving to this music and it is EXCELLENT.
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I GOT THE JOB! I GOT THE JOB! I GOT THE ALMOST DREAM JOB!
gif dance party!?
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Tired of all the bourgeoispeeves today? Then cleanse your palate with this fantastic video RLP sent me. It has everything. REMANCIPATION. CULTURAL...
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On writing for your followers
Of course tumblr is a community and that’s part of what’s nice about it. However, as someone who’s been told before (as...
“I don’t see anything bad about being stereotyped as a Latin woman. We are yellers, we’re pretty, we’re sexy, and we’re scandalous. I am not scared of the stereotypes.”
Sofia Vergara, of Modern Family, who maybe yells a little too much. (via newsweek)
Oh look, it’s a good thing I am typing this instead of, you know, actually YELLING at Newsweak.
Here is the thing: I can understand Sofia Vergara’s words, where she is coming from. Have I “used” the Latina stereotype to my advantage ever in social situations? Yes, probably. I mean, nobody is free from the social context where interactions take place. However, no amount of “making fun of our stereotypes” is ever going to fix stuff like this (from the article):
It’s a quality that DeGeneres poked fun of recently in a behind-the-scenes video for their first Cover Girl shoot, calling Vergara’s accent “phony” and claiming “to be sick of” Vergara’s struggles with the English language.
I’ve lost track of the amount of times I’ve had to smile politely while people made fun of my accent. We will only be truly free to embrace these stereotypes when we don’t have to deal with reactions like that. Meanwhile, no, I resent the fact that Newsweak implies we should all “exploit” it to our advantage.
“A Filipino worker was tied to a chair by a racist colleague in the North while another was locked in a freezer, a community representative has claimed. The allegations emerged as new research found almost half of Filipinos living in the North say they have experienced racial harassment in the workplace.”
Ireland: Report warns of workplace racism | Irish Examiner
I’ve been posting about escalating anti Black racism in Ireland for the past couple of weeks. Now a report by Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities (NICEM) has been released with chilling details of the abuse endured by members of the Filipino community. From the article:
Filipino community representative Jason Braga, 36, who has lived in the North for nine years, said some of his compatriots were frightened to report abuse in case it harmed their chances of staying in the country.
“I was told of a nurse being tied up in a chair and a hotel worker being locked up in a freezer,” he said.
A few weeks ago I posted about the first case of “anti White racism” to be tried in a French court. Finally yesterday the verdict came out.
How these dresses look on them
Girls on the street in New York City, 1960s. Photo by Joel Meyerowitz.
I need to work this look
How it looks like when I attempt to replicate the look:
More information on how to participate and submit at the link.
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Kwate’s study aims to address two unanswered questions confronting biomedical and behavioral researchers: What effect does racism have on the body, and what can society do about it?
“Most people don’t think of racism as a social construct that affects health,” says the trained clinical psychologist, who came to Rutgers last year from Columbia University. “They think of behaviors like diet, doctor visits, and the like, not so much about how the broader processes of inequality affect a person’s ability to engage in healthy behaviors.”
”Health News - Rutgers Researcher Exploring Effects of Racism on Immune System
I don’t want to quote the entire article but it is well worth the read. An excerpt:
The summer of 2010 found Kwate and her team biking through central Harlem in Manhattan and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, shooting videos with cameras mounted on the handlebars to document signs of institutional racism. They are now coding the videos to identify such features as the retail environment and the proliferation of vacant lots.
The two predominantly African-American neighborhoods were chosen because they are similar in demographics and land-use characteristics. The researchers are interviewing a random sampling of 450 residents about their experiences with racism.
The study will measure the respondants’ immune system and metabolic function over two time points through physical tests.
14kgoldnyc replied to your quote: Announcing her presence with a major gesture with…
Do you think there will be any ‘cultural differences’ backlash because she’s U.S.-born?
I don’t expect so, not necessarily. Because from what I read, she seems to have always identified with her Ecuadorian roots, even while in the US. There will be backlash because of her proposed laws for equality, though. I’ve seen the backlash in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico City so I wouldn’t expect it’d be different in Ecuador. The pressure from the Catholic Church and its affiliated groups all over Latin America is HUGE. It can be as virulent and agressive as what the Christian right does in the US.
The Netherlands: Anti-Islam party PVV vows to resist plans for funding transparency
via DutchNews.nl:
MPs are overwhelmingly in favour of new legislation to increase transparency in political party funding, but the PVV wants to keep its donations secret, website nu.nl reports.
The draft legislation will be debated on Wednesday and Thursday and will require parties to publish the identies of donors giving over €4,500, nu.nl says.
PVV parliamentarian Hero Brinkman says the measure is ‘anti-PVV’.
Of course Geert Wilders opposes this legislation because, as the article notes, the majority of his donations come from far right groups in the US (such as the one from Pamela Geller). This foreign donations would raise suspicions of his big talks of patriotism, nationalism and allegiance to The Netherlands.
“Announcing her presence with a major gesture with the closure of ex-gay torture clinics, Ecuador’s new American born Health Minister has been revealed to be an openly gay woman who led the charge against those clinics since 2008.”
Ecuador President appoints lesbian to cabinet | Washington Blade
From the article:
According to LGBT Latino news blog, Blabbeando, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa announced Wednesday the appointment of Carina Vance Mafla as the replacement of outgoing Health Minister, who resigned earlier this month over charges that he’d left the health system to languish without proper modernization efforts.[…]
Yesterday, the nation’s most prominent LGBT organization brought attention to Mafla’s sexual orientation by heralding her as a “lesbian activist.”
According to the translation, “the organization goes on to say that they hope the newly appointed minister will pay attention to current delays in the distribution of HIV medications, create guidelines to prevent discrimination against LGBT individuals at hospitals and health centers and take action on shutting down illegal religious “clinics” that promote “cures” for homosexuality.”
I wrote about Anne Sinclair’s appointment as editor of The Huffington Post France and the interview she gave to Elle Magazine stating that she should not be judged for her choice to remain married to Dominique Strauss-Kahn due to the fact that the rape accusations were a private matter. From the piece:
Back then, when I asked “Why is nobody holding Dominique Strauss-Kahn accountable?” I was specifically talking about mainstream media. This management of mainstream world views, of ideology and rhetoric is not innocent, nor is it removed from the consequences it carries on our daily lives. So, I have to wonder about the ethical constructions that allow someone like Ms. Sinclair, one of such managers of ideology, to remain married to the guy who brought so much suffering to vast regions of the Global South. How does someone who claim to be concerned with matters of “the dignity of women here and elsewhere” reconcile her politics with the fact that she is married to a man who has been, for the most of his career, in the business of spreading indignity.
“That family over there is Other, they do not comport themselves as we do”
That WASP person everyone has already been making fun of.
I wish I could cross stitch because this is beyond hilarious and I would hang it on a frame above my computer. If anything, as a reminder of what we are up against.
Heidi Klum and Seal divorce?
Excellent opportunity to bring the “anger”, “Hulk like temper” and “volcanic” moods of a Black man! Because such tropes are totally innocent and not all contextually bound to hundreds of years of racism. Bonus cookies if you illustrate your novel ideas with a photo of said Black man so that the points can be driven home with more emphasis. And extra bonus slices of pie if all of it is just based on gossip rumor and none of the people involved are on the record talking about it. After all, gossip is totally dissociated from racism, right? RIGHT?!
Oh Vice Magazine
You talked to three (count… THREE!) virgins and I quote “they even let us dress them up in Laura Ashley-style country-girl garb” for the photos. Now THAT is what I call a “feminist feature” (your words, Vice… your words). Carry on with your badass self! Surely feminism needs more mockery of women and their lives.
uncdan replied to your quote: An eight-year-old Nigerian girl has been injured…
Do you think it’s related to the economic downturn? When things are good, people are happy. When things are bad, people turn on each other and blame each other.
You know, no, I don’t think so. I used to think that it was the case (i.e. happy people when they have money vs. racist assholes when they are poor) but I no longer believe so. The argument reminds me of those who somewhat justify physical or verbal violence by drunk people. They say “it’s because they are drunk!”. No. It’s because they are assholes. There are plenty of people who get drunk and don’t go around beating up others. The alcohol exacerbates a character trait that was already there. With the current wave or racism sweeping the EU, I tend to take a similar stance: the economic downturn has only brought back to the surface what was already there. One does not go from “accepting and embracing of one’s neighbor” to “violent, racist thug” through lack of money. That’s a co-opt to avoid addressing the historical issues with race that Europe never remedied to begin with.
“An eight-year-old Nigerian girl has been injured in a suspected racist attack on her family’s home in Dundonald, which has now been targeted twice in the past week.”
Ireland - Nigerian family targets in ‘racist attack’
The number of racist attacks in Ireland seems to be increasing exponentially on a daily basis. From the link above:
A brick thrown at the home of Charles Awoyelu and his wife Monica in the Brooklands Estate, at around 5.30am on Saturday.
It smashed through a bedroom window where Promise, one of their five children, was sleeping. She was taken to hospital with a head injury.
