When it comes to stuff like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, I’ve found it’s usually way better to think to yourself ‘I don’t want to be’ than ‘I’m not’.
I.e. if someone goes ‘that thing you just did is ableist’, instead of going ‘I’m not ableist, I don’t hate disabled people!’ it’s usually a lot better to go ‘I don’t want to be ableist, I should rethink what I’m doing/saying/etc in light of that fact’. Because that shifts your thinking so rather than jumping straight into denial and attempts to defend your character, you’re instead more inclined to look at how your actions could be misrepresenting your intentions. Or whether you’ve overlooked something, been callous, or acted in ignorance.
Death of the author feels like such a white take tbh
“it doesn’t matter that this author was blatantly and violently racist and homophobic because the author is dead uwu”
Honestly, death of the author is a concept that is used incorrectly quite a bit. It’s meant to mean “It doesn’t matter if the author had [x] intentions because the text itself and the reader’s interpretation of it matter more than what the author intends.”
So, if an author is not intending to be racist or homophobic, death of the author means their work can still be racist and homophobic if that is what the text portrays to the readers. Whether the author meant it or not.
The intent of the author, no matter how benign, does not change what is on the page. And if the page is full of bias and prejudice, then it’s biased and prejudiced.
I feel like this is pretty important to realize: the cops are becoming exhausted, and there’s a limited supply of them. NYPD has every cop on duty working full days every day. We have an unlimited capacity to rotate in fresh fighters that they simply do not have. We can take shifts. They can’t.
This is also why we’re starting to see bare minimum concessions now. The powers that be have realized they’ve made a grave miscalculation. A week into it, and ideas that seemed utterly impossible even a month ago are on the table- LA is talking about a hundred and fifty million dollar budget cut for the LAPD, every cop directly involved in George Floyd’s murder has been arrested and Chauvin’s charge has been raised to second degree murder, parts of the Minneapolis city council is pushing to permanently disband the Minneapolis police department.
What could we win with two weeks? Three? An organized general strike that brings the entire economy to a crashing halt? It is difficult to feel hopeful in such brutal times, but there is profound hope to be had in the realization that a week of getting our asses kicked has advanced the mainstream narrative around police so much further than electoralism would’ve dared to dream in 100 years.
