Moniquilliloquies.

girljanitor:

girljanitor:

happyclamcake:

girljanitor:

innocent-bystanders-inc:

nudiemuse:

princelesscomic:

girljanitor:

Self Evident Truths

S. Ross Browne

Ummm…I am so VERY into this right now!

But Black people in period or fantasy settings totally makes the stories unreal.

Also holy shit I love these.

How come I don’t run across this stuff regularly?

Because of racism and the retroactive erasure of POC in Medieval Europe. Pretty much the same reason you almost never see these works of art either unless you’re already looking for them:

I’m gonna be that person and point out that a lot of these paintings girljanitor added from the “Middle Ages” are actually from the Renaissance/Baroque era, where a lot of these paintings are very famous in the art world. Hell, in my lower level Spanish Art and Society class we discussed the second picture (Portrait of Juan de Pareja) moreso than some of Velazquez’s other more “famous” paintings. It’s hanging up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as we speak. Soooo…yeah. Throwing works of art into false categories to prove a point doesn’t really prove anything.

And I suppose I might as well attach this here too:

Considering one of the painting I posted has the date “1744” right on the fucking front of it, you might imagine I’m probably aware of it.

Also pretty sure Alessandro, Duke of Florence lived July 22, 1510 – January 6, 1537, whose portrait is included

As well as the portrait by Jan Mostaert, who lived 1475 – 1555…

Or the Black squires painted by Guadenzio Ferrari, who lived 1471 – January 11, 1546…

Or any of these pieces which might be a little more REALLY TRULY FUCKING MEDIEVAL

thepeoplesrecord:

The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.

Source

Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.

selchieproductions:

biomedicalephemera:

kidsneedscience:

Born in 1707, Carl Linnaeus would rise to such a level of greatness that the philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau once said “Tell him I know no greater man on earth,” and was heralded by many of his contemporaries and apostles as Princeps botanicorum - the Prince of Botany. 

[…]

Portrait of Carl Linneaus by Hendrik Hollander, 1853, in the public domain.

Image from Haeckel’s Tree of Life in the public domain.

Guest post for Kids Need Science.

Taxonomy and Nomenclature 101

Can we talk about the fact that this Linnæus is wearing a South Saami traditional dress from the borders between Westrobothnia and Iemptia and that he would have died if he hadn’t been helped by my ancestors as he was travelling around Sápmi?

Can we talk about the fact that he acquired Saami clothes and religious artefacts to show them off as exotic party tricks in the Netherlands, where he was working for three years?

Can we talk about the fact that he probably didn’t know a lot about the Saami, despite pretending to do so, based on the fact that in this picture he’s wearing the hat of a married South Saami woman, popular until the early 19th century?

Can we talk about the fact that Linnæus saw the Saami as a primitive people, and that he loved to talk about the Saami as the Noble Savages of Sweden - savages whose ‘naïve’ life style he would love to share, because the Saami - if we’re to believe Linnæus - didn’t care about worrying about the future or feel sorry about the past?

Can we talk about the fact that he’s carrying a sacred gievrie - drum - that Saami men and women were prosecuted and sometimes sentenced to death for owning? He got away with making a mockery of our pre-Christian religion by showing it off to European academics, and my ancestors got burnt at the stake or put in prison for owning one. Fair.

The actual law used to prosecute these men and women was the following one:

“Om någon med Förbindelse til Sathan, Skrift- eller Munteligen sig försyndar, så skal then, lijka som för Träldom, straffas til Lijfwet: Men all Widskepelse med Signerij, Spådom, Löfjerij och allehanda fördömeliga Konster, så wäl som ock alt offrande wid Trä, Siö och Källor, skal, med Penningar, eller med Häktelse wid Watn och Bröd, eller med Gatulopp, eller med Rijsslij tände, afstraffas, alt som Brottet och Personen är til; Hwar wid hwars och ens Ålder och Förstånd bör ansees, om han har warit förförd, och om han en eller flere gångor, slika Synder bedrifwit, hwarefter Straffet antingen lindras eller skarpes.”

Linnæus’ trip to Sápmi happened in 1732. Ten years earlier, 1722 11 Saami men and women were brought in front of the court in Liksjoe - my current home town - and sentenced to a number of days, weeks or months in prison for owning drums, and some 30 years before Linnæus acquired his drum an Ume Saami man from Árjepluovve was beheaded and burnt at the stake together with his gievrie, accused of wizardry.

Can we also talk about the fact that the actual drum Linnæus is holding in this picture belonged to the Ume Saami man Anders Nilsson Pont, who, had he not died of an illness in 1723, would have had to spend a minimum of 8 days in prison without food or water and then publicly renounce his Saami faith, lest he’d be sentenced to death, only for owning this drum? For those of you who are wondering what drum I’m referring to, here’s a copy of the entire painting:

The drum, who was miraculously not destroyed by the police at the time was later given to Linnæus, who most likely had never seen one being used in real life, seeing as he used two drumsticks to play it when he was showing it to academics in the Netherlands.

And really, can we please talk about how Linnæus is mixing Saami clothes and accessories from different areas? The pewter wire embroidered bag he’s wearing is a traditional tobacco pouch from Vualtjere, where my mother was born; the pattern’s been passed on among families in the area for centuries and is still used. The shoes are most likely Lule Saami, the gapta is from southernmost Sápmi and the drum is Ume Saami.

Can we please talk about the fact that race biology was more or less invented by Linnæus? He claimed that humans were made up of five races, and described them with a number of racist, stereotypical ideas borrowed from both antiquity and contemporary colonial discourses alike. According to Linnæus, humans belonged to the following races, who he described using Hippocrates’ four temperaments:

• Europæus albus (white European)
• Americanus rubescens (red American),
• Asiaticus fuscus (brown Asian)
• Africanus niger (black African)
• Homo Monstrosus (everyone who didn’t fit into the other categories, i.e. the Chinese and the San people)

So yes, Carolus Linnæus was important, but let’s not forget that he was also problematic as hell.