This is the same Racefail!

Signal Boosting the Latest Racefail, Yeah, there's more.

It took me a while, as ever, to start reading on this because SPN is not my fandom. For various reasons, top of them being that I don't watch the show, don't read the fics and find the fact that I know things that happen in that fandom without trying too, nay, by actively avoiding it, troubling.

Regardless, this is a continuation of Racefail, it never stopped, may have petered down, may have converged and reconverged else where, but it never stopped, because these discussions CANNOT stop.

Fiction isn't a reflection of real life, but we write our prejudices into them and our biases are a part of the way we encounter the world, how we perceive things.

Friends if we do not take into account that our prejudices and biases have actual affect on the world, that they inform us of our privileges and that yeah, we white people can be totally and utterly blind to the fact that we are do not see what someone with brown skin sitting next to me on the bus can see.

Creating a story in which tragedy is a back drop to romance is fine, in fact it's a classic. Reproducing racist white-saviour narratives and disregarding the fact that the tragedy does not actually exist in order for characters to get together is boggling.

Or not, ya know, after all, this is the same Racefail.

P.S. I'm not immune. This isn't a judgement call on other people as much as it is on me, 'cause you know, I'm privileged and I continue on my merry way while this discussion sluices off my back because, ostensibly, it's not about me. It so so is about me and all those other white people who think that dealing with this is hard and annoying and time consuming and just repetitive. Yeah it is hard and annoying and repetitive, because it doesn't fucking go away - I can say, I don't want to deal and say "Baruch Ha'Shem" (God Bless) that I was born White and Jewish in this place that I live, but you know what? That's a cop out. That's being lazy, that's not acknowledging the history of that privilege and yeah, you can fail... but knowing that can and will is a pretty good start.

Civil Disobedience NOT required

I know it seems like I'm constantly talking about this, but honestly this stuff is scary and so blandly disingenuous that I'm not sure people actually realise the danger of this sort enterprise.

There was a "Police Day" at an elementary school in a small town in the centre of Israel.

Just the title got me prickly with anxiety:

At 'Police Day,' first-graders get to play with real rifles and machine guns

"An educational institution should educate for civic values and independent thought, not admiration for force," said Amit Sharon, whose daughter attends one of the schools. Border Police spokesman Chief Superintendent Moshe Fintzy said the program was authorized and coordinated with the Education Ministry. "We're not like Hezbollah, which train kids to commit suicide," he said.
[...]
[Another parent] noted that although the children understood that all the weapons were used for dispersing demonstrations, there were no explanations about why people held protests or when they might need to be dispersed. "As far as they know now, all protests need to be disbanded by any means necessary. That's hardly education for democracy," he said.

I live in fear of the future generation if this is the public education, especially when one parent is quoted saying:
"the children were very impressed by the demonstrations, especially by the dogs that attacked and stopped someone on command. I don't understand their complaints - there's nothing wrong with demonstrating Border Police activities. It's part of the reality of life here. The kids' tender souls weren't hurt".

Jesus.

Of course, Israeli schools are the "shit" these days, what with racial segregation which is finally being cracked down after years of this shit going on in the Orthodox Settlement of Immanuel.

And yes, when I say Settlement, I mean it is a town built in the West Bank, Palestine. So, yeah.
Racism.

The irony is anvilicious.