TabuTalk

“What to the Slave Is 4th of July?”: James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass’s Historic Speech In a Fourth of July holiday special, we begin with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, he gave one of his most famous speeches, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro....

“Every weapon that a US Army soldier uses has the express purpose of killing human beings. That is what they are made for. The choice rifle for years has been some variant of what civilians are sold as an AR-15. Whether it was an M-4 or an M-16 matters little. The function is the same, and so is the purpose. These are not deer rifles. They are not target rifles. They are people killing rifles. Let’s stop pretending they’re not........Be honest, you don’t need that AR-15. Nobody does. Society needs them gone, no matter how good you may be with yours. Kids are dying, and it’s time to stop fu***ng around.”

“F**k you, I like guns.” America, can we talk? Let’s just cut the s**t for once and actually talk about what’s going on without blustering and pretending we’re actually doing a good job at adulting as a country right now. …

“Time and again, white people acting as allies in other people’s ‘progress’ have not just failed to address racist power relations; they have entrenched white dominance. Altruism cannot be the basis for white anti-racist action. There’s only one thing that can: solidarity.”

White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism Altruism is too often carried along by the currents of racist capitalism.

“I try to let go of penetrative s*x as a goal. I spent my younger years learning about foreplay and intimacy as a “means to an end.” Now intimacy, in all forms, is the end. The best way to get there is to listen to my partner’s words, actions, and body throughout s*xual encounters — even if that means stopping s*x in its tracks. That is its own form of intimacy.”

"I thought I was one of the good guys. Then I read the Aziz Ansari story." She told me to stop. I ignored her. It took me years to realize how wrong I was.

Wonder why we don’t think we are creative?