SNAP for Change -- A WPC fan blog

Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.

- Nikki Giovanni (via funkchunk)

(Source: gradientlair)

Fat people face an absolute torrent of shame, stigma, bullying and oppression almost everywhere we turn. We face it at home from friends and family who have been taught by society that we should be shamed “for our own good” in some kind of logic-defying effort to make us hate ourselves healthy. We face it at work when our company has a point of view about our body size rather than focusing on our work performance. We face it at the doctor’s office when our actual symptoms are ignored and our health put a risk by doctors who diagnose us as fat and prescribe weight loss the minute they see us, never hearing a word we say. We face it from well-meaning strangers who have been taught by society that a fat body is an indication that we need outside advice, especially that of strangers with no particular health training who think that being thin makes them an expert on how to become thin - like being a brunette makes them an expert on willing your hair to turn brown. We face it from not-so-well-meaning strangers who try to beat us down to make themselves feel better in a society that beats everyone down. We are certainly not the only group who faces this, but we face it nonetheless, and - like the trainers on The Biggest Loser - we are told by society that we should be thankful for the massive war being waged against us because their plan of eradicating the world of everyone who looks like us is a kindness, and we should say thank you and get on the treadmill.

- Ragen Chastain  (via monkeyknifefight)

(Source: curvessahead)

In the U.S., where ninety-six percent of the reported perpetrators of rape are white, eighty percent of the men in prison for rape are black.

- Joseph Weinberg & Michael Biernbaum, Conversations of Consent: Sexual Intimacy without Sexual Assault (via nirvikalpa)

(Source: cocknbull)

Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s), especially considering most doctors here won’t perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don’t become bankrupt over medical bills — those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the “Christians.” If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn’t the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?

Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s about controlling women, period. It’s about sticking your nose in other people’s business. It’s about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One — even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You’ve just gone and made it up about “life beginning at conception.” Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women’s uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

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Michael Moore: My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain (via veruca-assault)

I wish I could reblog this 1,000 times.

(via evangotlib)

Why is it that people are willing to spend $20 on a bowl of pasta with sauce that they might actually be able to replicate pretty faithfully at home, yet they balk at the notion of a white-table cloth Thai restaurant, or a tacos that cost more than $3 each? Even in a city as “cosmopolitan” as New York, restaurant openings like Tamarind Tribeca (Indian) and Lotus of Siam (Thai) always seem to elicit this knee-jerk reaction from some diners who have decided that certain countries produce food that belongs in the “cheap eats” category—and it’s not allowed out. (Side note: How often do magazine lists of “cheap eats” double as rundowns of outer-borough ethnic foods?)

Yelp, Chowhound, and other restaurant sites are littered with comments like, “$5 for dumplings?? I’ll go to Flushing, thanks!” or “When I was backpacking in India this dish cost like five cents, only an idiot would pay that much!” Yet you never see complaints about the prices at Western restaurants framed in these terms, because it’s ingrained in people’s heads that these foods are somehow “worth” more. If we’re talking foie gras or chateaubriand, fair enough. But be real: You know damn well that rigatoni sorrentino is no more expensive to produce than a plate of duck laab, so to decry a pricey version as a ripoff is disingenuous. This question of perceived value is becoming increasingly troublesome as more non-native (read: white) chefs take on “ethnic” cuisines, and suddenly it’s okay to charge $14 for shu mai because hey, the chef is ELEVATING the cuisine.

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One of the entries from the list ‘20 Things Everyone Thinks About the Food World (But Nobody Will Say)’.

Real. As. Fuck.

And real talk, I wish there was a Clueless Whitebread Muhfuckas filter on Yelp, because they stay talking stupid shit about places around my way.

(via crankyskirt)

Let’s also talk about how if there is a white face in front of these foods, that person can get more money because this is now a “sophisticated version made by whiteys”, but if people are doing their own shit it needs to be cheap like it is back in the country.

(via crackerhell)

oop.

(via inkplink)

Same thing about soul food being horrible and cheap and harmful to your health until some pasty trick decides to put it on the menu in their mediocre ass white table-cloth restaurant where they charge $20 for a plate of turnip greens and corn bread!!

(via jcoleknowsbest)

There is a possibility that immigrants sold food like that from their homeland cheaply, and that because it was originally cheap and has largely stayed that way, people think it should be cheap. Maybe these immigrants were just trying to make a living in a new country and realized that selling expensive food wasn’t the best way to do that. There is a possibility that not every single fucking thing that you perceive is bad is a result of horrible white people. There is also the outright bullshit comment above that would implicate soul food was ‘appropriated’ from black people, even though white people have eaten it for centuries too. Not to mention that one can very easily find cheap Italian food. Are you familiar with pizza?

(via pamplemousseonesixseven)

Here’s the thing.

Suppose you’re into French food, right? And you want something inexpensive, that’s authentically French. You could go to a cheap crepe place and get a crepe and call it a day. Cool

But suppose you want something more high end? That’s fine - there are options. Nice, white tablecloth joints with foie gras galore and highly-trained waitstaff.

Those two places, by the way, are both almost guaranteed to be owned by white people. Not necessarily French white people, but white people. And based on numbers, it’s highly likely that the head chef at the expensive place is also white.

Now suppose you want Mexican food. Want something inexpensive? Cool. Head to a neighborhood with a significant Mexican immigrant population, and it should be easy to find. And that restaurant (or food truck, in some cases) is probably run by someone from that ethnic community.

Suppose you want high-end Oaxacan cuisine, though? At a nice sit-down place with Michelin or Zagat writeups? (Because some folks are into that, and want to go to a place with an impressive wine list, or a string quartet playing while they eat, or whatever. It’s not my thing, but that’s some folks’ taste.) Chances are, that restaurant is also owned by white people. Chances are, the head chef there is also white. (Rick Bayless is a good example of a white dude who’s made his reputation on high-end Mexican food.) Maybe some of the back-of-house employees, the ones who get paid the least and do the drudge work of cooking the food served, are Mexican, but nobody sees them. They don’t get recognition, and they don’t get the paychecks that come with that recognition.

That’s the issue. This isn’t about some “ugh, everything bad is white people” grousing (and how you took it that way, I’m assuming, is based on your own biased reading) - this is about who gets recognized for doing what. Who gets credit. Who gets paid.

And if you think I’m full of shit for saying that, get at me when you can find a Mexican American chef of Bayless’ level of fame, with their own PBS cooking specials and cameos on Iron Chef America.

I’m not even going to touch that comment about pizza, because it’s disingenuous as fuck, considering that pizza is for the most part closer to street food than high-end restaurant fare.

(via crankyskirt)

White folks and food appropriation pisses me off on so many levels.

Guess what hipster? You didn’t “discover” that delicious “ethnic” restaurant… It was there and doing business without you.

Guess what pretentious ass mother fucker? It’s not worth it “despite being in a bad neighborhood”- it’s there for and from the neighborhood. Racist.

Guess what price snobs? It’s cheaper because it is serving the community that it’s in, but more expensive than on your trip to __________ because the cost of living is so much different.

Pizza is basically street food. Taco trucks are not less hygienic than your white tablecloth restaurants. That Chinese restaurant isn’t a dive- it’s trying to get by and feed the family. 

I don’t eat at Euro-restuarants. I sure as fuck don’t eat at white-owned restaurants that appropriate cuisine from POC at inflated prices- plus, y’all dont even do it right. We can tell. You can keep charging 500% of the cost of your pasta, I’m keeping my money in our communities. And eating better.

(via reallifedocumentarian)