Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Article: The Other Afghan Women

Posted on September 6, 2021 by Ampersand

Just read a long-form article in the New Yorker, about the war in Afghanistan – what locals call “the American war” – from the perspective of a rural woman. The article is excellent – probably the best I’ll read this year – but absolutely devastating. Content warning for everything you’d expect, including many deaths, including of children.

Dado went even further. In March, 2003, U.S. soldiers visited Sangin’s governor—Dado’s brother—to discuss refurbishing a school and a health clinic. Upon leaving, their convoy came under fire, and Staff Sergeant Jacob Frazier and Sergeant Orlando Morales became the first American combat fatalities in Helmand. U.S. personnel suspected that the culprit was not the Taliban but Dado—a suspicion confirmed to me by one of the warlord’s former commanders, who said that his boss had engineered the attack to keep the Americans reliant on him. Nonetheless, when Dado’s forces claimed to have nabbed the true assassin—an ex-Taliban conscript named Mullah Jalil—the Americans dispatched Jalil to Guantánamo. Unaccountably, this happened despite the fact that, according to Jalil’s classified Guantánamo file, U.S. officials knew that Jalil had been fingered merely to “cover for” the fact that Dado’s forces had been “involved with the ambush.”

The incident didn’t affect Dado’s relationship with U.S. Special Forces, who deemed him too valuable in serving up “terrorists.” […]

The “terrorists” were essentially any men – completely innocent men included – our allies could grab and turn over to the US in exchange for a bounty.

In 2004, the U.N. launched a program to disarm pro-government militias. A Ninety-third commander learned of the plan and rebranded a segment of the militia as a “private-security company” under contract with the Americans, enabling roughly a third of the Division’s fighters to remain armed. Another third kept their weapons by signing a contract with a Texas-based firm to protect road-paving crews. (When the Karzai government replaced these private guards with police, the Ninety-third’s leader engineered a hit that killed fifteen policemen, and then recovered the contract.) The remaining third of the Division, finding themselves subjected to extortion threats from their former colleagues, absconded with their weapons and joined the Taliban. […]

It was now 2005, four years after the American invasion, and Shakira had a third child on the way. Her domestic duties consumed her—“morning to night, I was working and sweating”—but when she paused from stoking the tandoor or pruning the peach trees she realized that she’d lost the sense of promise she’d once felt. Nearly every week, she heard of another young man being spirited away by the Americans or the militias. Her husband was unemployed, and recently he’d begun smoking opium. Their marriage soured. An air of mistrust settled onto the house, matching the village’s grim mood.

So when a Taliban convoy rolled into Pan Killay, with black-turbanned men hoisting tall white flags, she considered the visitors with interest, even forgiveness. This time, she thought, things might be different.

Posted in Afghanistan | Comments Off

Open Thread and Link Fram, Mispelled Adition

Posted on September 2, 2021 by Ampersand

When Thin is a Trans Requirement | Autostraddle
“These experiences are rarely given airtime, partly because the few trans people in the public eye are almost universally thin, and partly because fatness and transness together bring a double burden of stigma: they’re both seen as a form of excess & violation of public norms, and they’re both met with community policing and shaming.”
US State Policies, Politics, and Life Expectancy – MONTEZ – 2020 – The Milbank Quarterly – Wiley Online Library
“Results show that changes in life expectancy during 1970-2014 were associated with changes in state policies on a conservative-liberal continuum, where more liberal policies expand economic regulations and protect marginalized groups. States that implemented more conservative policies were more likely to experience a reduction in life expectancy.”
Afghanistan: 3 Unlearned Lessons – by Nonzero – Nonzero Newsletter
And a fourth lesson: We really should stop attempting “interventions” like this.
Opinion | Anna Harris of Texas who works with indigent defendants says she was arrested in retaliation for her work – The Washington Post
Interesting stuff about a “holistic” model of providing legal defenses to people who can’t afford their own, versus the standard model.
Texas has betrayed women – UnHerd
“Not content to simply outlaw abortion, they have constructed a law that maximises the humiliation, stigma and degradation on any woman who seeks to end a pregnancy. In Texas, every woman’s entire community has been deputised to police her most private choices.”
On Twitter, I discussed why we shouldn’t infer a lot from that study which found that spoilers make readers enjoy stories more.
The Secret Bias Hidden in Mortgage-Approval Algorithms – The Markup
“Holding 17 different factors steady in a complex statistical analysis of more than two million conventional mortgage applications for home purchases, we found that lenders were 40 percent more likely to turn down Latino applicants for loans, 50 percent more likely to deny Asian/Pacific Islander applicants, and 70 percent more likely to deny Native American applicants than similar White applicants. Lenders were 80 percent more likely to reject Black applicants than similar White applicants. … In every case, the prospective borrowers of color looked almost exactly the same on paper as the White applicants, except for their race.”
How Oslo Achieved Zero Pedestrian and Bicycle Fatalities, and How Others Can Apply What Worked | TheCityFix
Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue – Scientific American
Good article from 2016; unfortunately, I don’t think much has changed since then. “Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like “white” and “black” being used as biological variables.”
Human races are not like dog breeds: refuting a racist analogy
“But because the analogy between races and dog breeds incorrectly privileges biology over the social and historical factors that have led to the development of racial constructs, here we demonstrate how genetic data fails to substantiate the racial categorizations used in the U.S. today and their equivalence to dog breeds.”
Will the Child Tax Credit End Traditional Welfare? – The Atlantic
The headline should replace “end” with “replace,” and “traditional welfare” with “TANF.” And, I doubt it will, but I wish it would.
Don’t Believe the Hype (About Believing): You Don’t Need Religion to be Happy | Religion Dispatches
Amia Srinivasan · Does anyone have the right to sex? · LRB 22 March 2018
“The question, then, is how to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.”
The Ides of August
A persuasive essay about what happened in Afghanistan. “I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were.”
‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars | Cities | The Guardian
“On the same streets where 30 people died in traffic accidents from 1996 to 2006, only three died in the subsequent 10 years, and none since 2009. CO2 emissions are down 70%, nearly three-quarters of what were car journeys are now made on foot or by bicycle, and, while other towns in the region are shrinking, central Pontevedra has gained 12,000 new inhabitants.”
To survive, China’s biggest gay dating app became a pharmacy – Rest of World
“It’s trying to make sure the state will not mistake it as a gay activist organization,” said Chan. “It must, in order to survive.” The app was founded by a gay cop who was forced to resign after he was outed.
Podcase recommendation: Dead Eyes.
Somewhere within the show, Connor Ratliff describes his podcast as being a lot like “Serial,” if the mystery were about something of no importance whatsoever. In this case, Ratliff – an actor – “embarks upon a quest to solve a very stupid mystery that has haunted him for two decades: why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO mini-series, Band Of Brothers.” I’ve listened to the whole first season now, and it’s surprisingly entertaining.
What podcasts are y’all enjoying? I’m particularly interested in non-political podcast recommendations.

Top image: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Bottom image: Photo by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash

Posted in Link farms | 20 Comments

Let’s Ban Handguns. (How Democratic State Legislators Should Respond To The Supreme Court’s Decision On The Texas Abortion Ban)

Posted on September 1, 2021 by Ampersand

Texas’ abortion ban has a novel enforcement mechanism:

Usually, a lawsuit seeking to block a law because it is unconstitutional would name state officials as defendants. However, the Texas law, which makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, bars state officials from enforcing it and instead deputizes private individuals to sue anyone who performs the procedure or “aids and abets” it.

The patient may not be sued, but doctors, staff members at clinics, counselors, people who help pay for the procedure, and even an Uber driver taking a patient to an abortion clinic are all potential defendants. Plaintiffs, who do not need to live in Texas, have any connection to the abortion or show any injury from it, are entitled to $10,000 and their legal fees recovered if they win. Prevailing defendants are not entitled to legal fees.

The Supreme Court hasn’t yet ruled on the constitutionality of this law. But the conservative justices (minus Roberts) ruled that, while we await a ruling, no injunction against this enforcement mechanism is possible.

So maybe the Texas law will eventually be found unconstitutional (which it is, blatantly) – but in the months or years it’ll take for that to happen, abortion providers in Texas will be driven out of business, and many Texans will suffer enforced childbirth.

Okay, then.

Here’s how I’d like to see Democratically-controlled states respond.

Democratic states should ban all privately-owned handguns, with the enforcement mechanisms taken word for word from Texas’ abortion ban.

A private handgun ban would be blatantly unconstitutional under D.C. vs Heller, but the Supreme Court has ruled that the civilian-vigilante style of enforcement would make the ban immune to injunction while the inevitable lawsuit proceeds.

Throw in an assault rifle (broadly defined) ban, a high-capacity magazine ban, and trigger locks requirements for all firearms.

Actually, why stop at banning guns? Let’s have a $10,000 bounty for unvaccinated adults.

Sure, it’s probably unconstitutional, but with no injunction possible, we could force a lot of people to turn in their guns and get vaccinated before there’s a final ruling. A lot of gun dealers might be forced out of business, too.

Seriously. If they want laws enforced by citizens going after $10,000 bounties, let’s give them what they want.

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Supreme Court Issues | 45 Comments

Haiku Roundup for August 2021

Posted on August 30, 2021 by Mandolin

I posted this a few years ago, but I think it’s worth posting again.

A while back, during a phase when I was having trouble writing fiction, a friend of mine showed me a haiku they’d been working on. I couldn’t manage something like a whole story, but writing seventeen syllables of poetry came easily, and felt right.

These poems are only sort of traditional haiku. For one thing, I used English syllables instead of trying to adapt English words to Japanese morae which are similar to syllables, but not the same. I did use a seasonal reference in the first line of each, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of seasonal imagery that would have been used in a traditional poem. Also, I talked a lot more directly about what I was feeling, instead of using the metaphors to convey it.

However, I did try to convey my thoughts as I experienced them in that transient moment. I also tried not to revise, to just let them be as they were. (I think I cheated a couple of times, though.)

These haikus aren’t necessarily in order, and they’re from a bit ago, so they won’t match up with the current weather, but I hope the words mean something to you.

Light through naked trees.
My dreams were not peaceful, and
I just want to sleep.

In night’s deep belly,
midnight is a great crevasse,
dark but sheltering.

Pet me, please. Now, please.
Stop tapping on that machine.
I’m here; I love you.

Evening starts at three.
I have a day’s work to do
in the waning light.

The twilight sky bleeds
to deeper and deeper shades
of thoughtful Winter.

Half-naked branches,
black, with yellow flags waving
gently in the wind.

Bitter, windy, dark,
clattering cold strikes the rain,
sharp, overwhelming.

Hasten through the cold,
the wind pushing you backward.
The windows are bright.

Posted in Poetry | Comments Off

Cartoon: Doing Too Little vs Helping Too Many

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Ampersand

Help us keep making cartoons by supporting my Patreon! If you do, you’ll grow three feet taller and dogs everywhere will like you!

This month’s collab with Becky Hawkins has more of Becky in it than usual, I think.

This cartoon originated in a remark Becky made, that most safety net debates seem to boil down to doing too little versus helping too many. What Becky said stuck in my head, and I came back to her with this cartoon script.

Of course, in the real world, the same person is seldom taking both parts of the argument. But I think of the blonde woman in this strip as representing the split and contrary nature of the American political system as a whole.

This is an issue area I’ve done cartoons about before, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it again. Americans have a fear of giving money to the wrong people (and it’s not very well hidden that “wrong” often means “brown”) that continually hinders us from becoming a compassionate society.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. All four panels show the same two people. A redhead wearing thick glasses and a green jacket over a checkboard sweater – let’s face it, they look like a nerd – is sitting at a desk, with a stack of papers on the desk. (I’m a nerd, so I’m allowed to say that.) Standing next to the desk is a blonde woman with a blue dress and a matching blue necklace.

PANEL 1

Redhead gestures towards the stack of papers, smiling. Necklace leans over to look at the papers, raising an eyebrow.

REDHEAD: Check this out! I’ve created a proposal for better welfare benefits.

NECKLACE: Hmmm…

PANEL 2

Necklace points to something on the papers, looking a little annoyed. Redhead is concerned by what she’s saying.

NECKLACE: But this plan leaves so many people out.

PANEL 3

Redhead leans back over the papers, writing rapidly with a pen. Necklace leans over, hand on chin, as she looks at what Redhead’s writing.

REDHEAD: Good point… Here, let me just fix some things…

PANEL 4

Redhead, looking proud, holds up a paper to display to Necklace. Necklace angrily yells, throwing papers into the air.

REDHEAD: Okay, how’s this?

NECKLACE: NOW YOUR PLAN HELPS PEOPLE WHO DON’T DESERVE IT!

This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 17 Comments

Cartoon: Maternity Leave: The Enemy of Freedom! And Lions!

Posted on August 26, 2021 by Ampersand

Another collaboration with Kevin Moore! You can see more cartoons by Kevin and I here.

If you like these cartoons, why not support them on Patreon? It’s because of lots of patrons pledging $1 or $2 that I get paid – and then I can pay Kevin in turn. And I think Kevin supports my patreon, too? And come to think of it, I support his. It’s like a virtuous cycle of small amounts of money moving around in circles.

We’ve been seeing more Kevin around here lately because I love Kevin’s style; it’s expressive, grotesque and a little old-school in a way that reminds me of the better “Mad Magazine” artists.

Normally, on these collaborations, I do the lettering and draw the word balloons. Kevin chose to do all that himself, this time. I don’t think most readers will notice – good lettering should mostly go unnoticed – but to my eye the lettering looks hugely different on this one.

This cartoon is about maternity leave, which should be the easiest, least controversial issue in the world – of course people should have maternity leave. We need maternity leave just to make the world a bit fairer to people having children.

But it’s also really good for everyone. Because all of us, even childless folk like me, need there to be children so there can be a next generation to grow up and support my Patreon.

(And also keeping society running generally. I suppose that matters too.)

But this cartoon is also about the sky-is-falling overreactions we always see for anything that regulates business or benefits workers, no matter how sensible. Soccer players have learned to play the refs by faking agonizing injuries if a player from the other team so much as gently bumps them. Corporations have learned a similar strategy. Absolutely everything is, in the rhetoric of corporations and their apologists, an existential threat to business.

(Geez, if capitalistic businesses are that frail and tenuous, maybe we need a more robust alternative?)

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. All four are set in a mall; we can see a hot dog place, and in the background is a mall kiosk with a sign that says “Kitsch Empire.” There are three characters: A male executive in a suit and necktie, and two pregnant workers, both dressed in food court uniforms (but different uniforms, so presumably they work for different food outlets). One of the workers has a nametag, and the other has a ridiculous tall chef’s hat striped in the same tacky colors as the sign for the hot dog place.

PANEL 1

The executive has his back to the workers, but is turning back to bark at them.

NECKTIE: Maternity leave? Why do you people hate liberty?

SILLY HAT: What?

PANEL 2

Necktie now has a hurt expression on his face. Nametag replies with a skeptical expression.

NECKTIE: When you force a corporation to give maternity leave, you take away its freedom!

NAMETAG: But what about our freedom to…

PANEL 3

A close up of Necktie, who is now wailing like an infant, crying and balling his fists.

NECKTIE (yelling): Would you clip the soaring eagle’s wings? Would you gag the might lion’s roar?

PANEL 4

Necktie, still sobbing, has dropped to his knees and is hugging Nametag around her legs. Nametag pulls back, taken aback. Silly hat holds up a hand to whisper a comment to Nametag.

NECKTIE: SOB! Just let business be free! Waaaaah!

SILLY HAT: And they call us needy.

This cartoon on Patreon.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Feminism, sexism, etc | 14 Comments

Cartoon: Conservatives, 1988-Present

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Ampersand

I can keep drawing these cartoons because a bunch of people support my patreon, mostly at $1 or $2 levels, which I think is really cool. Join us!

The nice thing (and also the sad thing) about this cartoon is it’ll always be current; I just need to keep replacing the words “critical race theory” in the last panel with with each new scare du jour.

(This is something I do regularly – if just changing a few words will keep a cartoon current, I’ll do it! I just did with this cartoon this morning).

I remember first hearing the phrase “political correctness” in the late 1980s. At first it was a tongue-in-cheek term lefties used to make fun of our more over-the-top comrades, and of ourselves. But the right grabbed on to it and it became the menace that’s taking over the youth. Paul Campos writes:

In the 1970s and 1980s, [the phrase “political correctness”] was used by New Left people in an almost invariably ironic way, usually to signal disdain for leftist orthodoxy of some sort (“I know it’s not very politically correct, but I’m ordering a hamburger”).

Revealingly, Allan Bloom’s THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND (1987), which was without a doubt the ur-text for what would very soon become the ubiquitous right-wing critique of American higher education as a veritable viper’s nest of Orwellian indoctrination into leftist orthodoxy, does not contain the phrase.

Just four years later, the phrase was everywhere. An October 1990 New York Times article by Richard Bernstein is generally credited for being the journalistic Ground Zero for what in short order became a full-blown moral panic about What Those College Professors Are Doing To Our Kids.

A few weeks later Newsweek, still a very important conduit of conventional wisdom to middlebrow America at the time, followed up with a cover story, and we were off to the races. (A NEXIS database search reveals 70 uses of the phrase in 1990, more than 1500 in 1991, and more than 7000 three years later).

In more recent years, the right hasn’t switched up their strategy at all – but it feels like they’re switching their terminology much more often. (Probably social media has sped up their pace.) The phrases they use don’t need to make any sense (the right-wing definition of “critical race theory” is far more all-encompassing than the academic movement of the same name), as long as it can feed the panic.

Which isn’t to deny that some lefties – like some righties – are overzealous, too quick to judgement, and too unforgiving. Nor is it to deny that some people have suffered unjust consequences, like David Shor losing his job. (Although Shor’s story is the exception, not the rule).

Is there a problem on the left of some people being too dogmatic and lacking in mercy or a sense of proportion? And that sometimes manifests in angry people on the internet overreacting and people getting fired?

Yes.

Is this anything that hasn’t been going on since at least the 1980s? No.

Is this at all unique to the left? Nope, the right does it too – and is constantly given a pass.

Is the level of panic we’ve seen about this both partisan and wildly disproportionate? Yes.

But I think creating that panic is beneficial to the right.

Christopher Rufo, the right-wing polemicist who has, more than anyone, been responsible for the current flavor of right-wing panic being “critical race theory,” forthrightly admits it’s a tactic:

We have successfully frozen their brand—”critical race theory”—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.

And it’s a tactic they’ll keep on using, even if they have to change their term every month.

This strip was so much fun to draw! Six panels of nothing but cartoony panic. The main challenge is making sure every panel looks different.

The strip was also drawn completely in Clip Studio Paint. After decades of drawing in Photoshop, this is a big change for me, but I keep being more and more impressed by the functions CSP has that make drawing comics easier. I realize that this isn’t relevant for 99% of the folks reading this, but if you’re a cartoonist who draws digitally, give it a try – it’s worth the learning curve.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has six panels. Each panel shows a different character or collection of characters. All characters shown are white.

PANEL 1

An extreme closeup of a white person who, seen from this close, could be any gender. They are screaming, spittle flying from their mouth.

PERSON: Look out! Political Correctness is coming!

PANEL 2

A woman is running on a desolate hillside, screaming in panic.

WOMAN: It’s the Social Justice Warriors! Flee! Flee!

PANEL 3

A bald man in a short-sleeved collared shirt with a reddish necktie is waving his arms around in the air and yelling at the reader. Despite being bald, he has very long eyebrows that stick out in a few directions (and I honestly have no idea what I was thinking when I drew those eyebrows!).

MAN: Cultural Marxism is here!

PANEL 4

A woman lifts her face to the sky, hands on her cheeks, yelling in panic. She’s wearing a long skirt with a pattern of stars, a collared shirt, and a reddish vest.

WOMAN: The Woke will destroy us all!

PANEL 5

We see three people. Far away from us, on a rocky hill, a person seen only in silhouette is yelling. In the middle ground, a terrified looking person with shoulder-length hair is looking towards us. And in the close foreground – so close that half his head is missing – a man with huge bulging eyes and a big open mouth is staring at the reader.

SILHOUETTE PERSON: Run! It’s Cancel Cultue!

PANEL 6

An older man, with white hair and a white beard is yelling at the reader, his mouth huge. He’s wearing a brown-and-red-checkered shirt and yanking his own hair with both hands.

MAN: Critical Race Theory! Nooooooooooo

This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc. | 6 Comments

Zombies Need Brains Kickstarted Three New Anthologies!

Posted on August 12, 2021 by Mandolin

Live happily ever after… or don’t. It’s up to you.

Zombies Need Brains (@ZNGLLC) is kickstarting three new anthologies, including an anthology of fairy tales that have been smashed up and remade into something new, SHATTERING THE GLASS SLIPPER.

I’m one of the authors who’s signed up to participate, along with awesome folks like Alethea Kontis, Cat Rambo, Jose Iriarte and lots of others whose work I’m excited to get to know. (The editors also plan to consider open submissions once the kickstarter funds.)

At the same time, ZNBLLC is also funding two other anthologies, NOIR and BRAVE NEW WORLDS.

I’m contributing some rewards!

I’m offering up to three backers a printed copy of one of my short stories with margins full of ridiculous, hand-drawn doodles. When I’ve done this in the past, I’ve drawn on copies of my flash stories “Death and the All-Night Donut Shop” and “Again and Again and Again.” Not sure which story I’ll pick this time!

Early backers who contribute before the Kickstarter reaches its goal will get an original poem that’s not available elsewhere online. If the Kickstarter reaches its stretch goal, I’ll send all backers a copy of a short chapbook including six flash fiction drafts and an original poem.

As for my story, I’m planning a Rapunzel set in an urban fantasy version of Seattle–not my usual thing! However, I’m also working on a Little Mermaid retelling about alienation, fish reproduction, and the combination thereof. Hopefully, I’ll be able to offer the editors a choice.

I adore fairy tale retellings, both writing and consuming them.

As a child, I obsessed over Shelley Duval’s Faerie Tale Theatre, Datlow & Windling’s fairy tale anthology series, and Tanith Lee’s collection, Red as Blood.

Here are a couple more recent retellings I adore:

Neil Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan” — in transformational conversation with Narnia
Cat Rambo’s “Foam on the Water” — a thoughtful, languid Little Mermaid

And here are a couple of mine (I swear not all my retellings are NSFW!):

“All That Fairy Tale Crap” — NSFW post-modern Cinderella
“Tea Time” — NSFW (especially if you happen to be working in a Victorian time travel situation) romance between the Mad Hatter and March Hare

Thanks to ZNBLLC for doing the work to keep small press anthologies alive!

Check out the Kickstarter for SHATTERING THE GLASS SLIPPER and its siblings, NOIR and BRAVE NEW WORLDS.

You can follow Zombies Need Brains on Twitter for updates regarding the kickstarter and anthologies.

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Teach MLK Not CRT

Posted on August 10, 2021 by Ampersand

I make a living drawing cartoons because of lots of people pledging small amounts to my Patreon. $1 or $2 helps a lot!

Sadly, I had to cut all the MLK quotes way down to fit this tiny four-panel format. At the end of this post you’ll find more complete quotes, with links to sources.

I wrote this cartoon during one of the periodic surges of conservatives quoting MLK’s “dream” speech – or, more precisely, quoting the one sentence of the speech any of them seem to know: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

A great quote – but it’s taken out of context by conservatives who argue that it’s wrong to teach that racism is an ongoing problem, one that has been part of the USA from the very beginning. It’s currently being used in service of a nationwide agenda of punishing teachers and professors who teach what right-wingers call “critical race theory.”

The observation that many things MLK said would be sneered at as “critical race theory” by today’s conservatives is not original to me. I’ve seen the same observation made by a lot of people, including Dr. Mansa Keita, Sam Hoadley-Brill, Don Hasan, Tema Smith, Liam Hogan, Joshua Adams, MLK’s son MLK III, and MLK’ s daughter Dr. Bernice King.

My rendering of the school building in panel one isn’t great – but it’s serviceable, and it was a great deal of fun for me to draw. I am definitely a convert to Clip Studio Paint and its perspective-drawing tools. I could have drawn a more realistic school building by tracing, but with Clip Studio I could draw it from scratch – and I think the result, while less realistic, is a better fit with the cartoon’s drawing style.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus an additional tiny “kicker” panel below the bottom of the cartoon.

The cartoon shows two people talking outside what looks like a school building. One of the people is a Black man, bald on top and chubby and wearing glasses, a shirt and a tie – he looks like he could be a school principal. The other person is a white woman, wearing a sweater-vest and a patterned skirt, with her hair in a pony tail. She’s carrying a protest sign that says “Teach MLK not CRT.”

PANEL 1

Sweatervest holds out a little booklet to Necktie. She looks angry, he looks unsure.

SWEATERVEST: Look at these quotes from your school’s assigned readings! This trash teaches white kids to hate themselves. Martin Luther King would never teach this!

NECKTIE: Okay, let me take a look…

PANEL 2

Necktie bends over the booklet a little, reading aloud. Sweatervest screams in anger.

NECKTIE: “White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism… The White Man’s Police are the ultimate mockery of law… America is a racist country.”

SWEATERVEST: See? See? They’re teaching our kids to hate white people, cops and America!

PANEL 3

A close-up of Sweatervest, her lips drawn back in anger, as Necktie continues reading aloud from off-panel.

NECKTIE: “The roots of racism are very deep in our country… The doctrine of white supremacy was imbedded in every textbook… It became a structural part of the culture.”

SWEATERVEST: “Roots of racism!” “Structural racism!” It’s all so hateful! Why not teach what MLK said? “Judge by the content of their character….”

PANEL 4

Looking puzzled, Necktie points to something in the booklet. Angrier than ever, Sweatervest leans forward to yell.

NECKTIE: But these quotes are all from Dr. King.

SWEATERVEST: And I’m sure he feels just sick about that!

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE CARTOON

This small black-and-white panel shows a smiling Sweatervest looking proud, holding a hand on her chest, while Necktie reads another passage aloud from the booklet.

SWEATERVEST: I don’t need to read MLK’s writings! “I had a dream” is all I need to know!

NECKTIE: Here’s another MLK quote: “White people believe that they have so little to learn.”

SOURCES FOR THIS CARTOON

To fit all these quotes into a tiny four panel format, I had to cut them way down, which frankly I feel bad about. Here are the fuller quotes, with links to the sources:

“If the Negro needs social sciences for direction and for self-understanding, the white society is in even more urgent need. White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism and the understanding needs to be carefully documented and consequently more difficult to reject.”

“When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.”

–Martin Luther King Jr., in his speech “The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement”

“However difficult it is to hear, however shocking it is to hear, we’ve got to face the fact that America is a racist country. W e have got to face the fact that racism still occupies the throne of our nation. I don’t think we will ultimately solve the problem of racial injustice until this is recognized, and until this is worked on.”

—Live Q&A with Martin Luther King Jr. at the sixty-eighth annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, March 25, 1968.

“It lies in the ‘congenital deformity’ of racism that has crippled the nation from its inception. The roots of racism are very deep in America. Historically it was so acceptable in the national life that today it still only lightly burdens the conscience. No one surveying the moral landscape of our can overlook the hideous and pathetic wreckage of commitment twisted and turned to a thousand shapes under the stress of prejudice and irrationality.”

“Soon the doctrine of white supremacy was imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit. It became a structural part of the culture. And men then embraced this philosophy, not as the rationalization of a lie, but as the expression of a final truth.”

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to Negro neighbors and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans.”

–Martin Luther King Jr., in his book Where Do We Go From Here

And finally, a “Teach MLK Not CRT” sign was reported by Learner Liu in the far-right newspaper Epoch Times, and then quoted by social justice activist Arnie Alpert at InDepthNH.org.

This cartoon on Patreon.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues | 17 Comments

Cartoon: I’ve Got Nothing Against Trans People

Posted on August 2, 2021 by Ampersand

This cartoon is by Becky Hawkins and I.

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This cartoon’s theme is pretty obvious – I’ve just seen (and I think we’ve all seen) a lot of people who support anti-trans laws or write anti-trans screeds taking a moment after whatever awful thing they just said to stick in a little disclaimer. “I’ve got nothing against trans people” or “some of my dearest friends are trans” or whatever. It’s a little piece of hypocrisy that’s worth calling out.

The politician in the second panel is just a generic politician. The other three characters are caricatures of real people – Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage (subtitle: “The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”); Matt Walsh, who has been caricatured in Leftycartoons once before; and the queen of putting transphobia into polite-sounding arguments that seem soooo reasonable on the surface, J.K. Rowling.

(Katy Montgomerie provides a very detailed rebuttal of Rowling’s anti-trans essay.)

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has five panels.

PANEL 1

A white woman with a big smile and brown hair is smiling and holding up a book. The book is entitled “Save The Children” and shows a small crying girl behind bars with a red frowny face over her abdomen.

The woman appears to be on TV – a two-level scrolling chyron at the bottom of the panel reads “Gay Menace Is Now Trans Menace” and “…enator says woke trans stole her lunch mone…”

WOMAN: My book is about how trans people are indoctrinating our children and enticing lesbian girls to become transgenders!

WOMAN: Please understand I’ve got nothing against trans people.

PANEL 2

A middle-aged white male politician, wearing a gray suit, is speaking from behind a podium; we can see that a TV camera is pointed at him. The podium has a seal that says “Real America.” He’s standing in front of two American flags. He holds up a finger to make a point.

POLITICIAN: My legislation bans medical care to help trans kids and teens. AND forces teachers to report transgenders to their parents.

POLITICIAN: It will also let doctors, nurses and pharmacists refuse to treat transgenders!

POLITICIAN: Of course I’ve got nothing against trans people.

PANEL 3

A white man with a full beard, wearing a open neck shirt under a suit jacket, is sitting in front of a laptop and typing rapidly (“tap tap tap tap tap tap tap”). He’s grinning in an unfriendly way. On the table next to his laptop are a number of take-out coffee cups, a crumpled-up soda can, and a mug that says “Liberal Tears.” In the space above his laptop, we can see what he’s typing.

MAN: Why say “trans women” when I can say “men wearing dresses” instead?

MAN: But I’ve got NOTHING against trans people!

PANEL 4

A hand holds a smartphone. On the smartphone screen, we can see a red-headed woman in a gown, wearing a dress with blue earrings and a blue necklace, sitting comfortably on a huge, old-fashioned wooden chair that would look at home in Hogwarts. She leans on one arm and makes an open gesture with her other palm.

REDHEAD: I’ve spent YEARS writing about how the trans movement is a mortal danger to REAL women. It’s practically my only subject!

REDHEAD: But I’ve got nothing against trans people.

PANEL 5

The set of a TV chat show called “Just Asking Questions.” (We know that’s what it’s called because “Just Asking Questions” is printed in huge letters on the side of the table the guests are sitting around. Plants on either side of the set are in pots with the painted on words “The JAQ Off.”)

The host, a nicely-dressed woman with stylish hair, sits in a chair on the left, smiling. Her guests, seating around the table, are the four characters we met in the first four panels of this comic strip.

HOST: Why do so many trans people say you’ve got something against them?

“SAVE THE CHILDREN” AUTHOR LADY: (shrugs as if bewildered)

POLITICIAN (arms folded, above-it-all expression): It’s a Mystery.

BEARDED DUDE: (ignores everything around him while he grins and types quickly on his smartphone)

REDHEAD: I blame cancel culture.

This cartoon on Patreon.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues | 18 Comments