Loftin shot the photo series after seeing the stark contrast between the Google results for “black boy in hoodie” and “white boy in hoodie.”
In contrast to the images of black men depicted in the Google image search, Loftin’s poses are sweet, affectionate, and sometimes silly.
“Black people, and black men specifically, exist outside of the stereotypes that have been created for us by the media and those that control it,” he told.
They always portray us as dangerous thugs in black hoodies, nothing new. And the fact that whites still believe that black people are dangerous to them proves just how ingrained white supremacism is in this country!
This man just wanted to say that racism is still a reality we have to deal with. Inferential racism certainly won’t go away by no one talking about it. We have to accept that there is a serious problem in America, that many white Americans are raised with these subtle cues all around them telling them to “fear blacks”.
Stop making up false stories about us, we are just people, just a little darker.
This is probably one of the most depressingly heart-wrenching photos I’ve ever seen. Native American children taken from their families and put into school to assimilate them into white society. the slogan for this governmental campaign ’“kill the Indian to save the man”. no official apology has ever been issued. never forgotten.
This is why we keep talking. Every child in this photo deserves to be talked about. The children grew up to be adults… adults who suffer from mental illnesses and a lack of connection to a culture/people that never wanted them to leave. These scars are passed down from generation to generation… and in reality the above picture is closer to present times than many would like to admit.
The amount of inter generational trauma from these schools ALONE has caused so much fuckery amongst native peoples.
And barely anybody understands it’s impact because the school systems don’t teach you this forced assimilation.
Calling gay sex sinful is literally conservative rhetoric so @ straight girls despite your shipping if you call ur gay couple smut fanfic a “sin” and talk about needing jesus im gonna need you to shut the fuck up because at this point ur no better than some old white conservative shouting that gay people are disgusting and dirty and sinful
sorry straight girls you dont get a pass on homophobia because u might think ur shipping is activism or you just love the gays but dont support lesbians or think about the other members of the lgbt community. @ straight girls perhaps instead of pretending like ur not homophobic just try and not spread homophobic rhetoric and actually call out homophobia in the fandoms ur in cause im real sick and tired of ppl calling gay couples and gay sex “sinful”
Butterfly also has Chinese protagonists. The ending is semi-happy as in the original couple doesn’t stay together. I thought it was really good, though.
Spider Lilies has Taiwanese women and it’s directed by a Taiwanese lesbian. It’s an emotional movie but it has a happy ending!
Sancharram (The Journey) stars Indian women. Also really good.
Alles Wird Gut is a German movie about two Afro German women that fall in love. (One is lesbian and one is bi and there’s a happy ending)
this is funny but also true because ime men actually are incapable or being respectful funny or charming
Whyyyy
I didn’t know that being respectful was a talent that many men are born without but it does make a lot of sense lol.
I like how all the things women need to be attractive are completely superficial and centered on our bodies, and for men it’s their personality that matters. It’s almost like women are only valued for our appearance while men are seen as actual human beings or something. Too bad that ~disadvantages~ men so much since they can’t fix their fucked up personality flaws and entitlement with a bikini wax.
Before the movie was even being made Disney tried to copyright “Dia de los Muertos”. You can see the problem with that, I hope- copyrighting and attempting to turn a holiday that originated from poc (all the way back to Aztecs even) into a trademark to rake in cash. Dia de los Muertos is an incredibly important day to Mexicans for spiritual reasons, as well as just for values and culture. The fact that Disney/Pixar even THOUGHT to do that is sickening in my opinion and made me lose interest immediately back in 2011.
It’s a rip-off from a movie directed written by Mexicans who put their hearts and souls into the movie because they knew they could get away with it.
The plot of The Coco is:
A Mexican boy named Manuel Miguel loves music and plays guitar but his family is deeply rooted in its tradition of bull fighting shoemaking and doesn’t want him to be a musician. He dies, travels to the Land of the Remembered Dead and seeks out his loved ones and meets all his ancestors which him get home and finally embrace his dream of music.
Wow. Sounds a hell of a lot like the plot of The Book of Life. Sure, no love triangle, but everything else is the damn same.
So let’s just entertain the notion for a moment that this:
is a fluke.
Some may say, hey, who cares if the stories are the same/similar? Fairytales are retold all the time, people just put their own spin on it. Plus, we get more Mexican/Latinx representation, right?
Pixar/Disney turned The Book of Life down when Jorge pitched it to them.
Everywhere Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua went, people said a “hispanic story isn’t universal”and wanted to compromise his vision. Pixar is one of them.They saw The Book of Life didn’t do well and wouldn’t be getting its intended 2 other movies (which would have included a latina woman as the star) and said, well, Elena of Avalor (a spin off of a baby show about a princess from a fictional country who has a magic guitar or whatever and looks a lot like Maria Posada) is doing well, so there’s a market! Let’s try this” because they know that Pixar is unstoppable. It’s all about brand recognition and marketing. Pixar will never have to worry about having enough money or the opportunity to make a movie.
The Book of Life is HIS story, based on his own love of culture and the holiday, not a fairy tale that can be retold over and over. It’s very special to him not only as a Mexican but because his best friend dies when they were children and his mother taught him about the spirit of dia de los muertos and as long as you remember someone, they’ll always be with you. He proposed to his wife Sandra on dia de los muertos so all his ancestors and favorite people could be there. The part of the movie where Manolo leads Maria to the tree with candles is based on his proposal.
“
This movie is really who I am.”
Dia de los muertos and playing guitar isn’t the only thing about being Mexican. Mexico has its own legends and fairy tales and hell, Mexican/Latinx characters could be in something that doesn’t center around their ethnicity. Like white people get when they’re the standard.
The Book of Life wasn’t DIA DE LOS MUERTOS: THE MOVIE (which Pixar was basically going to name it) because Jorge is just one Mexican and he doesn’t speak for his whole country. It was a movie that took place during Dia de los Muertos which his original characters to show his love for the day’s spirit and, ironically, was about writing your own story. Not only that, but it had themes of sexism, man’s destruction of nature, that sometimes traditions can be wrong, and life and death and love. That’s all universal.
What’s gonna happen when the movie comes out is there’s going to be merchandise everywhere. There are going to be skull masks, sugar skulls, stuffed skeletons, sombaros, and the like sold by a multi-billion dollar company and the imagery will be tied to Coco, not Dia de los Muertos anymore. Instead of buying such things from Mexican craftspeople and artists, they’ll be mass produced and used as a toy and costume. I’m not offended by white people painting their faces for the holiday as long as they understand the signifigance of it. This doesn’t help explain the signifigance, it just places a Disney trademark on the imagery for their own profit.
I may be a bit biased because I had the chance to attend The Book of Life art panel/Q&A (xxx) and met him again at his art show in July (xx), but as I said in the linked posts, the book of life has the most heart and soul and detail and care I’ve ever seen put into a movie. The art is incredible and stylized and it’s amazing what they were able to to with 3D models and translating the style. It makes me sad no one caught the panel on video because the amount of symbolism behind everything is truly remarkable and hearing the people behind it talk about it is unmatch.
Here are just a couple things I love about Jorge and why I love him and his work and the movie so much, besides he and Sandra being some of the nicest people I’ve ever met:
“One of my favorite things about Mexican folk art is this idea that artisans are making it,” Mr. Gutierrez said by phone from Washington. “So there are all these imperfections, and every piece is completely unique.
The motif of anti-bullfighting and man vs animal
LA MUERTE
“anyone can die… these kids are going to have the courage to live”
No research trips because they’re too touristy and you can’t understand a whole culture from one trip.
Excuse me if I sound bitter, but I guess I am. I can’t help it when the animation industry and Hollywood is all about money and it’s discouraging when it doesn’t matter how hard you try or how much care is put into something. It’s not fair, plain and simple. It’s happened before time and time again, but I have a great connection to this movie and Jorge’s work has helped me a lot to accept who I am (which I’d be happy to talk about in a different post if you’re interested).
I know I’ve mentioned this before and I don’t mean to add a lot of redundant info , but Jorge came as a guest speaker to my animation class literally the day before his first meeting with the producers for BoL. He went through so much shit just to be able to make this film and tell this story, probably even more than what quotes are out there on the record. And on top of him speaking, he offered to give us all a free crash course on character design, which no one expected, literally just out of the kindness of his heart because he cares so much about what he does, and he had an hour to kill before catching his plane. The man is an actual fuckin animation angel.
In addition to ‘you’re so Mature for your age!!’ and ‘I don’t really feel like an adult though!’, another ‘maturity’ related grooming tactic that adult abusers tend to use on their younger victims is the idea that an age mismatch is a good thing, because an older adult can ‘teach’ and ‘guide’ a minor about sex, how a relationship should be, etc.
Someone who uses this tactic isn’t really bothering to disguise their desire to be controlling – they’re just trying to romanticize it and sexify it. These abusers will not teach you more or better than you can learn from a more equal partnership.
They rely on you trusting their word for How Things Should Be in order to maintain control, which means instead of a mutual exploration of both your interests, like you’d get in an equal relationship, you just get trained in How This One Specific Person (who refuses to learn anything from anyone else so they usually don’t know much) Likes Things. And what they like is to get their way, always.
In a relationship like that, you don’t get to learn and grow and work together in partnership. Your choices are restricted more and more as the relationship continues, and your abuser will decide they want to break more and more of your boundaries. Whether or not you’re interested in something doesn’t matter to them. They’ll tell you they have to make your choices, For Your Own Good, while isolating you from people who might protect you and from opportunties to grow and learn.
Teenagers and kids, you deserve to be safe as you learn at your own pace what YOU like. An older person who promises to ‘guide you’ and ‘teach you what to do’ isn’t interested in your emotional well-being, they’re only interested in finding a malleable target for abuse. Please be very very wary of any adult who is interested in a minor more than a year or so younger than them, or any person who talks like this about relationships (like dating) that should be equal.
Abusers can sound very convincing, but they’re wrong.
No, no, you have no idea. It actually IS the beginning of the whole so-called “kawaii culture”. And it started because girls started using mechanical pencils, which provided fine handwriting. After being banished (more precisely, during the 80s), this kind of writing started being used in products like magazines and make-up. And, during this time, icons we usually associate with the whole kawaii industry (like the characters from Sanrio) came to life too.
And what many people don’t realize is that this subculture was born as a way for young girls to express themselves in their own way. And it was also used as something against the adult life and the traditional culture, often seen as dull and boring and oppressive. By embracing cuteness, these young girls (and adult women, after a while) were showing non-conformation with the current standards.
So yep. Kawaii is important, and it all started with cute, simple handwritting a few hearts and cat faces in some girls’ school notebooks ❤
!!!!!
NO OK THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!
This is also how the kawaii fashions started! Girls began dressing in cute and off beat styles for themsleves, they were criticized by adult figures telling them “you’ll never find a husband if you dress that way!” to which they began to reply “Good!”
All the japanese subcultures and fashions that evolved out of this became a rebellion to tradition and the starch gender roles and expectations the adults were forcing on the younger generations. As early as the 70s and still to this day you’ll see an emphasis on child-like fashion and themes in more kawaii styles and the dismissal of the male gaze with styles like lolita (a lot of western people assume lolita is somehow sexual due to the name of the fashion, but ask any japanese lolita and they will tell you that men hate the style and find it unattractive which is sometimes a large reason they gravitate towards the style – they can express their femininity and individuality while remaining independent and without the pressure to appeal to men)
Its so so so important to understand the hyper cute and ‘odd’ fashions of Japanese girls carry such a huge message of feminism and reclaiming of their own lives.
so are you telling me that Japan’s punk phase was really the kawaii phase
Yep. Kawaii has a lot in common with punk when you think about it. Fun quirk in cultures.
I think we really need to reaffirm now that no amount of homophobia can be acceptable in our culture. There is no such this as harmless or victimless homophobia. All homophobia contributes to violence against us. You can not “disagree” with lgbt people’s “lifestyles” without supporting the rhetoric and legislation that puts us in very real danger.
Homophobia isn’t that black and white though. You can hate the sin and still love the sinner.
OK, as a queer person who grew up in a genuinely loving, caring, utterly wonderful, and still deeply homophobic Church, let me try to fill in what you’re not understanding about this whole “Love the sinner” deal.
When we refer to people like you as “Homophobic” I want to be clear what we’re saying here. This is not a judgment of your intent. We are not describing you as a hateful person, as an aggressive or violent person. But we are saying that your actions and your attitudes participate in and reinforce a system of rhetoric that encourages violence against LGBT people, and, far, far more importantly, that forces millions of LGBT people to live in shame.
That’s really what this comes down to. Not hate. Not violence. Shame.
Consider the point purely theologically. Jesus tells us that to desire a sinful thing is as bad as to act on that desire. My lusting after another mans wife is as bad as actually sleeping with her. My genuine desire to hurt someone is as bad as actually hurting them.
So when you tell me that loving another man is a sin, you’re not just talking about physical acts of intimacy. You don’t get to draw the line there. You don’t get to pretend that I can be bisexual so long as I never actually physically act on it (which is already a terrible burden to place on someone). You’re saying that every time I look at a guy and imagine how soft his lips would be, or think about how beautiful his eyes are, I am sinning. I am a sinner every time a dude walks past me with a tight sweater on that shows of his arms. Every time he has nice hair or a nice smile.
My love, according to you, is a sin. That is the burden you are forcing people to live under. That burden forced me so deep into the closet that I didn’t even know I was there. It forced me to repress every genuine feeling of sexual attraction for other men, and to live for years with those feelings straining to get out, whilst I struggled with the constant guilt and shame that came from having those thoughts.
And I am one of the lucky ones, because I’m alive to have this conversation. Because for many, many LGBT people that guilt and shame manifests as self-harm, substance abuse, low esteem that leads them into abusive relationships, and very often suicide.
You tell yourself that you’re one of the good ones because you don’t hate us. You only hate what we “do”. But what we “do” is living. It’s being alive and whole and a part of this world, and if you genuinely believe that we can’t have that then you might as well put the gun to our heads and pull the trigger. Because you’re already doing that, you just don’t have the guts to admit it.
“You only hate what we do, but what we do is living” Wow. This is beautiful and so well written
reblogging for perfect commentary and future reference
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