Kirstin • 23 • Austin, TX
Hello! I have no idea what I'm doing on tumblr, but I like culture, nature, fashion and making jewelry and can't help but reblog political stuff, so there's that.
(via modelsofcolor)
WHY CAN’T STUFF LIKE THIS GO VIRAL? Morehouse Whiz Kid is Causing a Stir: 13-Year-Old Dominates College. LOVE THIS STORY PLEASE READ MORE…
PLEASE SHARE! SHARE! SHARE!!!!!!
At thirteen years of age, Stephen Stafford is causing quite a stir at Morehouse College. Stafford has a triple major in pre-med, math and computer science. Though he loves playing video games and playing his drum set, he is no typical teenager. He is exactly the kind of student I had in mind when I wrote the book, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about College,” because he shows the power of the black male mind when we put our energy into things that matter most. Over the 17-years I’ve spent teaching at the college level, I have never seen anything more impressive, nor more reflective of what black men represent.
“I’ve never taught a student as young as Stephen, and it’s been amazing,” said computer science professor Sonya Dennis. “He’s motivating other students to do better and makes them want to step up their game.”
Stafford began his college career at the age of 11, after being home-schooled by his mother. Stafford’s mother said that when Stafford began to teach her instead of being taught by her, she knew he needed to be in a college environment. Since that time, he has excelled in his classes and continues to grow intellectually.
via ramomart.comcome on
you know why this stuff isn’t viral
regardless, this is an amazing story
Officially jealous of a 13-year-old boy. Kudos, kid.
(via slay-z)
as most grad students of color know, Kaya Williams is not alone in feeling this way. this is a persistent problem on university campuses nationwide.
at Washington State University, for example, where a Native faculty member was recently brutally beaten within an inch of his life and three Asian undergraduate women were sexually harassed in racially targeted violence in the same weekend, the university has responded poorly at best; they never issued an emergency alert to students in the wake of the attacks, it took several days for administration to even acknowledge the events, and the only concrete thing they’ve promised is yet another inquiry & commission on the matter. these actions obviously don’t make a dent in patterns of violence on campus, considering the same response was given a few years ago when a Black student had his teeth kicked in, a trans student was severely beaten, & neo-Nazi propaganda was posted all over campus—no changes in campus climate have occurred. the university’s disappointing response to this violence isn’t all that surprising when you remember that they have terrible enrollment and retention rates for underrepresented students of color, an even worse rate of recruitment of faculty of color, no substantive requirements for curricula that addresses issues of race, and have recently consolidated their Women Studies, Queer Studies, & Ethnic Studies programs into one “minority studies” department (which is headed by a cis-hetero white male). moreover, there is a serious problem with sexual harassment and assault on campus, that’s occurring even at the faculty level.
is it any surprise so many students of color drop out, go on extended leave, and/or take way longer to earn their degrees? these universities are unsafe on every level, and things need to change.
(via nitanahkohe)
(via thisisrapeculture)
Danielle Hayes @ One Management
*rolls self up in carpet and dies*
(via modelsofcolor)
Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test
Hundreds of Chicago students are taking up the mantle in the fight against the role of standardized tests in public school closures as they walked out of a state exam Wednesday. Their message: “We are over-tested, under-resourced and fed up!”
Over 300 students from over 25 different Chicago public schools boycotted the second day of a state-wide standardized test.
Ahead of a school board meeting, at which the demonstrators were banned from speaking, the students rallied outside the district headquarters carrying placards and forming a human chain.
“We’re just trying to make a statement that tests should not determine our future or the future of our schools,” said student organizer Alexssa Moore, a senior at Lindblom High School.
Brian Sturgis, senior at Paul Robesan High School and boycott organizer with the group Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (CSOSOS), declared in an op-ed “We are Chicago students and we are here to save our schools!”
He writes:
Mayor Emanuel and his Board of Education want to close 54 grammar schools around the city, all of which are in black and Latino communities: this is racist. These schools are also being judged based on assessments and tests given throughout the year: this is foolish. These school closings will leave neighborhoods dismantled, parents lost, students unaccounted for, and more importantly, will put children in harmful situations: this is dangerous.
Sturgis explains that Mayor Emanuel and the Board of Education
are putting too much pressure on standardized testing and threatening to close schools that don’t have high test scores. When schools are under so much pressure to raise test scores it leads to low-scoring students being neglected, not supported. This is what happened when 68 low-scoring juniors were demoted to sophomore status at a southwest side high school in Chicago last month, right before the state test.
The student boycott follows a protest earlier this month, Occupy the Department of Education, during which teachers and education activists descended on the Capitol to draw attention to the rampant privatization of public schools and the rash of recent school closures.
In February, a nationwide day of action led by the Seattle school teachers’ boycott of a standardized test brought this issue to national attention.
(via caffeinatedfeminist)
“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
"Assata (via michellehuxtable)
I tell my students this every single semester.
(via notesofanativesister)
doubly relevant today
(via petticoatruler)
(via caffeinatedfeminist)
Koroit opal — The Koroit opal field is an opal mining area in Paroo Shire in South West Queensland, Australia.The Koroit opal field is known for the very distinctive type of boulder opal that is found in its mines
(via britdisarming)
[Self-portraits by Carrie Mae Weems, Käthe Kollwitz, Judy Baca, and Frida Kahlo, text “Never apologize for selfies”]
Wanted to get modern women artists and some WOC up in this one. If you reblog it would be cool if you kept the part in the brackets so these artists, two of whom are still working, will get credit—this conversational part below is nbd.
Im all about selfies, rn.
(via alexandraerin)
Photographer Isabel Muñoz studied members of the Mara Salvatrucha gangs from Los Angeles and Central American prisons; her work was put on display in downtown Mexico City in October of 2008. Muñoz spent time in prisons in El Salvador photographing the intricate facial, chest and extremity tattoos that feature variations of the gang’s name, which is often abbreviated to “MS” or “MS-13.” The number 13 represents the 13th letter of the alphabet, “M,” referring to “La Eme,” or the Mexican Mafia. The combination of El Salvadorian and Mexican gang affiliations represents solidarity and alliance among Southern California Hispanic gangs. MS-13’s affiliation with Southern California is also exemplified by the words “Sureño” or “Sur,” meaning “Southern” and “South,” respectively, which are also often seen tattooed on MS-13 gang members. [x]
That’s a given.
More population = more people = more people in prison.
What you should look at is the percentage of people in jail and compare it with other countries.Well then China would have the world’s largest prision population. But it doesn’t.
The US has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. This should be common knowledge by now.
70% of the US prison population is People of Color, that’s as much as all of China’s prisons.
The United States not only has the worlds largest prison population, but we have the worlds largest per capita prison population at well over 700 of ever 100,000 people incarcerated.
China has 1 billion more people than the US, yet still imprisons about 1 million fewer people than the US.
(via witchsistah)
