Faculty members at the University of Chicago just announced that they are going on a partial strike & calling for a worldwide boycott of the University of Chicago until demands for #reparations, #abolition, and democratic university governance are met. docs.google.com/document/d/1ks…
Also included in the demands are the creation of an Critical Race Studies Department, increased funding for the @CSRPC, and democratic control of all Diversity and Inclusion activities on campus. In short, faculty are demanding #MoreThanDiversity.
Please read the full letter and sign on if you can. This has got to be one of the most forward thinking, transformative faculty actions that I have heard of across the nation.
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"What if we saw in this data the increasing numbers of racially blended families and mixed-race children – and understood them as signs of a more racially diverse, economically just and culturally rich future? "
This is called mixed race utopianism. It's wack. A quick thread.
Since at least the 16th century settler colonial societies in the Americas imagined the mixed race character of the colonies as some kind of futuristic utopian ideal where the bodies of mixed people would somehow magically lead to a more just world (w/o any affirmative politics).
Mixed race people have continuously been used as America's symbolic embodiment of hope and change---being forced into the role of political props to deny the existence of racism (despite being so brutally subjected to it). The empires of violence that made mixed people get erased
Can we please stop individualizing and moralizing this.
The 'patriotic' state SYSTEMATICALLY subsidizes the 'owners' of stolen land and labor through a variety of police actions and tax incentives.
Receipts below on how to make tons of money in real estate while paying no taxes
The IRS has "How to tips" to show accountants and wealthy owners how to avoid taxes. It starts with depreciation. Owners of rental property can offset profits by deducting 3.6% of its purchase price per year for 27.5 years even if the value is going up. irs.gov/publications/p…
This means you can buy a rental property for 1,000,000 dollars, it can go up in value by, say, $50,000 but in that tax year it will look like you lost $36,363 (3.6%). Add in deductions for interest payments insurance, maintenance, etc. and you'll usually pay no taxes on rents.
"Against State Capture" by @AustinMcCoy3 in @TowardFreedom is THE read of the day. So much insight from one of the most caring scholar activists I know. Avoiding elite capture of this uprising is SO important right now (even as it's already happening). towardfreedom.org/story/against-…
"Confrontations with police and attacks on property operate symbiotically with various strategies and tactics that activists and organizations have devised to evade state and electoral capture."---@AustinMcCoy3 on a diversity of tactics.
The notion of “non-reformist reforms” is likewise something that we cannot ever lose sight of. Any demand must ask itself how it is going to deepen and extend this crisis. The risk of falling into well-laid neoliberal traps right now is serious.
Would you believe me if I told you it was even worse?
Enslavers DID know that they were dealing with fully complicated human beings but decided to regard enslaved peoples as chattel anyway in hopes of destroying that very humanity (while reifying their own). #AuburnWorldHistory
For proof of this, think about Mary Prince's diary and how often, how arbitrarily, and how much "pleasure" her enslavers took in beating her. They didn't need to treat their cows that way because there was no human spirit to control, condition, and manipulate. @bethany_hadley1
In many ways, the racist notion of enslaved peoples as non-human is an attempt to justify the naked violence that is required to hold human beings in a condition of slavery. #AuburnWorldHistory@bethany_hadley1
I'd only add that, in my reading, critics of #Afropessimism who see it as "a death knell for...the kind of hope and energy needed to confront current problems" don't really understand Afropessimism
It's certainly pessimistic as it relates to OTHER utopian visions (Pan-Africanism, Marxism, feminism, etc.) but only then as it relates to the question of Black ontologies and the capacity to address antiblackness. Destroying capitalism/sexism is part of destroying the world.
In this way I always contend that a better name for those who get hung up on the pessimism part is Afrorealism or Afroskepticism.
The original faculty letter (also calling for abolition and various forms of reparations on and off-campus) can be found here docs.google.com/document/d/1ks…
They also are calling for a full outside boycott of all UChicago sponsored events (seminars, workshops, conferences, etc.).
Additional, specific, reparative demands that are now part of the student letter include increased funding and scholarships for Black grad students, a "formal grievance and reconciliation process" for acts of racism, and grad student participation in university governance.