Hehehehe
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Oh do, do read the full story here! But wait, there’s more!
One just never knows what treasure lies hidden in the Internet, waiting to provide joy, laughter, and simple awe at the stupidity of man. An organization called AFRU posted that delightful cartoon above (one that, if it were effective, would surely dismay the millions of African farmers who make a living growing and exporting coffee beans to the world) and you must, you simply must explore their site to discover oh so many jewels.
Such as this one:
Safe and recreational drugs is one of the many important cultural contributions that folks of color have made in the 20th century. Whether it’s responsible Hennessey drinking (consumed whilst perched on a dead water buffalo, sipping from a flask made from an enemy’s skin? —ed) or the cornucopia of culture that is cannabis, we invented it long before white folks prostituted it to consumerism. But there’s one drug that’s unquestionably and uniquely shrouded in whiteness — a “white drug,” if you will. We’re not talking about cocaine: it’s DMT.
Everywhere you look, you can find the whitest cishet men singing the praises of DMT or related psychedelics, from Joe Rogan to Post Malone. And in case you expected it from all the white men being involved, the truth is that there are (unsurprisingly) hidden layers of racism here.
You see, DMT may be shrouded in whiteness nowadays, but like everything else that you think is white, the drug actually has Latinx origins. Yes — clearly jealous of their lacking cultural contributions in the sphere of recreational drugs, white folks decided to just outright culturally appropriate one.
But if you remove cishet white men from the equation, then you’ll find that DMT actually has a history much richer and more diverse than a hardtack cracker. To understand the Latinx history of DMT, you first need to understand ayahuasca. To put it short and sweet, ayahuasca is the main psychoactive ingredient in DMT. Ayahuasca is a natural plant that naturally grows in nature (just like marijuana), meaning it’s safe. [and just like tobacco, poison hemlock, deadly nightshade, and asparagus, if eaten in quantity — Ed] It has been used for centuries by the indigenous peoples around the Amazon basin in spiritual rituals.
So that’s pretty neat, but we’ve only scratched the surface of DMT. Something you’ll quickly learn if you travel in the right psychedelic communities online is that DMT actually gets kind of creepy for Black folks. For some reason, Black folks around the world have experienced a similar racist phenomenon when taking DMT. But to avoid diluting their message, we’ll let their testimonies speak for themselves.
One person reported that their first trip was good, but their second trip took a turn for the worst. “This time, instead of the sacred, I was greeted with the profane, and saw cartoons of racist caricatures mocking me. They were malevolent and it felt like I could die,” they reported. “As much as the first trip was welcoming and accepting, the second trip was pushing me away and I felt a strong sense of ‘NO.'”
“My friend said that the elves were making a machine and they turned around saw him and they said hey look the (n-word) is back,” another person reported. [What, no “this is MAGA Country? Wasn’t Jusie there? — ed]
The most chilling experience reported so far invokes the powerful imagery of the slain Emmet Till. “I was surrounded by the elves, and they all started chanting ‘Emmett Till,'” the trip report began. “I later learned that Emmett Till was a Black man accused of harassing a white girl in the 1950s. I had never heard of this story before, being a Black man who grew up in a white school district. Then, the elves started to rush me and they all picked me up and started chanting the n-word while carrying me. The elves threw me down a black hole and I continued to fall for around 10 minutes until my trip ended.”
[Striking similar to poor Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald’s tale of the hippies who invaded his home, slaughtered his wife and daughters while chanting, “acid is groovy, kill the pigs’.]
Anti-Black spiritual warfare
One possible explanation for racist incidents while taking DMT is that the occurrence of racist DMT entities isn’t merely accidental or coincidental. Considering the Latinx origin of DMT and ayahuasca, it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that these racist entities are extensions of conflicts happening in the everyday realm; a sort of “spiritual turf war” going on between the Black and Latinx community.
This is the inevitable and direct result of white supremacy. We can definitively say this because it’s something that happens not only in the realm of the spiritual, but also the realm of the physical. White men take all of the resources and land, leaving the Latinx and Black community to fight amongst themselves for the scraps. Ideally, both groups would band together to fight against their oppressor, but that’s not the case as long as the waters are muddied and we all fight each other.
Still, let’s not discount the fact that some Latinx men are willing militants in the fight for white supremacy. Just look at some of the recent shootings in the U.S. committed by Latinx men. Yes, Latinx men might have some intersecting oppressions of their own, but they’re still favored in the patriarchal white supremacist system over Black folks, who are at the bottom.
There’s much more in that essay, but let’s move on to another one, just to keep the chuckles rolling, but remember: somewhere, some college probably produced and graduated these geniuses and for that matter may even have them on their teaching staff:
Iconic justice: bye-bye, ‘floppy disk’—now let’s get rid of the tool icons. Symbols in our environment must reflect current reality and values, not what's in the white working class male's garage.
Welcome to 2022. Justice in emojis and computer icons has made great headway. In 2015 we finally first got our emojis of color; in February of this year we got our pregnant man emoji; and we have now almost entirely gotten rid of the confusing “floppy disk” icon, that creepy retro-tech visual from a time before women and People of Color were invited into personal computing.
Now it’s time to have a conversation about getting rid of the cogwheel and tool icons. Here’s why.
Just outmoded — or old order symbols?
Like the floppy disk, most of us millennials have no lived experience with these physical brute force devices [coming from a culture that was unable to discover the wheel in thousands of years of existence, it’s probably no surprise to see that this person doesn't’t understand the concept of mechanical advantage, and is probably still angry that his one attempt to drive a screw by pounding on it with a screw driver was ineffective] — and in fact, they stopped having a modern application in our digital world at just around the time we decided to start critically examining White Supremacy. This makes these icons potent symbols of the old order.
Picture this. You want to enjoy your Ben & Jerry’s Americone Dream and watch a contemporary movie. You’ve just about settled in with your bucket of dairy based self-care when the protagonists wander near a garage or workshop.
BAM! You’re suddenly in the middle of a full-on mansplaining incident centered around an oil rag equipped white working class male inevitably inhabiting the space. He’s waving around a wrench — his royal orb symbolizing the rule of his tool kingdom — while talking about the 1960s muscle car he’s working on and conjuring up ever more banal middle class America sentimentality.
You know the scene. It’s Hollywood’s biggest trope.
The wrench is irredeemably tied to our idea of the white working class male, and indeed to his self-conception. The wrench is the white working class male’s identity. And Mr. white working class male, I needn’t tell you, is irredeemably tied to Trumpism and ensuing White Supremacy.
Thus we have a direct link from White Supremacy to symbols that needlessly surround all of us in our daily life.
And, just for fun, I’ll conclude with AFRU’s heartwarming, loving, mission statement (poem? Warble?):
We unapologetically celebrate folks from all backgrounds
We celebrate all the people, big and small,
With open hearts and open arms, we stand tall.
Gay people and straight people, queer people and everyone in-between,
All walks of life, all genders, and all scenes.Transgender and cisgender, gender non-conforming too,
Everyone is welcomed, their journey we’ll see through.
And the sex workers, drag queens, and those in the scene,
Their stories we’ll lift up, let their voices be seen.Disabled folks, the elderly, the young and the bold,
All deserve love, respect and protection, never to be told.
Intersex, asexual, pansexual and more,
We stand with you, and we’ll fight for your roar.Black, white, brown, yellow, and all shades in-between,
Racism has no place here, our love is supreme.
Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and more,
All religions are honored, peace we implore.Poor, rich, middle-class, no matter the wealth,
Equality is our goal, justice our wealth.
Refugees, immigrants, those seeking a home,
We’ll stand with you, never leave you alone.So let us come together, and raise our voices high,
For social justice and equality, let our love never die.
We celebrate all identities, in unity we’ll stand,
For a better world, for all, hand in hand.
UPDATE: From the comments section of the coffee post. Is our own Ignatius Reilly posting on other sites?
Do you remember the SNL skit where Eddie Murphy disguised himself as a white man and discovered what they were like when they were among their own? Our AFRU scribe does, and goes him one better:
If you have a white coffee drinking friend, he or she may have even let you in on the old coffee joke white coffee drinkers share when PoC aren’t around: “there are three things that are necessary in order to make a cup of coffee, and they are: first, a black man to roast the coffee; second, a yellow man to grind it; and third, a white man to drink it.”
Oh, that old chestnut! Haven’t heard it since we integrated the yacht club, damn it, and oh, how I miss it!
