Looks like a pump, feels like a wingtip.
Dutch author: ‘If only Africans would complain a bit more’ [Africa is a Country]
In a recent interview, Pepijn Vloemans, a regular commentator in Dutch mainstream press and the author of the book ‘Wat hebben we weer genoten’ (What a joy we had), described how his drive for adventure and experimental urge to test himself in a low-comfort environment led him to Africa. We’ve lifted and translated some highlights from the interview:
Vloemans: In the Netherlands I lead my comfortable life, while so many things are going on in the world, of which I have no knowledge at all. I thought to myself: “What am I still doing here? I need to leave!” My goal was to test myself in a less comfortable environment. Without thinking I booked a trip to one of the unsafest places in the world. Only roughly did I outline my route. I wanted to travel up along the Nile, through Uganda, to continue to South Sudan, which had just become independent. I had not read a Lonely Planet in advance.I decided to simply go.Interviewer: You are not particularly advertising Africa in your book.
Vloemans: I intentionally didn’t romanticize the story and left out the beautiful sunsets. Reading about how merry the life of Africans is annoys me, which is why I wanted to show its shadow side. The people over there don’t complain about their situation and as a consequence there is no progress. My book is a praise to the chagrin. [The Dutch’ never-ending] complaints about delayed trains might be bad, but it does lead to improvement. In Africa buses only leave when they are full. Apparently no one minds to be late.
Next to the absence of outrage, the short term thinking of many Africans surprised me. I felt I was constantly living in some student digs. For every problem, they seek a ‘houtje touwtje’ [ad hoc] solution. Is the bus door broken? Well, let’s go without it then. It scared me how many people only look one day ahead. I saw the value in the long-term solutions as we have them in Holland, such as old age pensions and hospitals… It almost feels naughty to write something negative about Africa, but the progress that needs to take place is so fundamental that I wondered what development cooperation could contribute. Politically, I became more right wing.
The interview then drifts off into how Vloemans discovers he actually needs his comfort and envies anthropologists, whose energy and interests leads them to indulge into different cultures, before getting back to familiar subjects:
Interviewer: Despite diarrhea, visa stress, unbearable heat and pests, did you also have good times?Vloemans: Definitely, at certain moments. The city of Gondar was a paradise to me after my journey through the dessert. And the city of Addis Abeba, high up in the Ethiopian mountains surprised me with its fresh air, fresh espressos and Eucalyptus scents. But after those rough weeks I especially enjoyed coming back home to our wealthy country, where everything is well managed.
The book comes with a blurb by much-praised author and much-invited post-colony expert Adriaan van Dis: “Pepijn Vloemans is a true Africa traveller: a man who explores the abysses and the heart of darkness.”
To ensure a minimum of lost-in-translation-damage, we have sent Pepijn an email. He has not yet responded.
WhitenessFuckingRuinsEverything.com
CHOLA
Photographer / Steven James Scott
Stylist / Maria Barfod
Makeup / Simon Rihana
Hair / Nisha Patel
Model / Leore@Photogenics
____________________________________________Because Vogue is a high-end fashion book, a bible, as some people consider it, I always expected if Vogue were to do a story like that, they would do it in a glamorous way, and they would make the models look beautiful … just make it look like a glamorous side of that culture. And what I saw in ‘Haute Mess’ was [that] it looked like the models were kind of making fun of those type of people, you know, the way they presented it, the whole thing looked like — and maybe that’s what [they were] going for — but it just looked like a hot mess … We’re not blaming Vogue or anything … but [we wanted to] make the model look glamorous,and we’re not having her, like, eating tacos with all gold teeth and smiling mockingly at the camera.We’re just trying to show a beautiful side of every culture.
As for using the term chola, Ntuen explained:
I think it’s something like that can be embraced by everyone, just like how the term “nigga,” [has] been embraced, especially by younger generations. That’s just, like, a word. I feel like everyone is just trying to make these words desensitized, so it just expresses their culture. You see young kids walking around saying, even white kids, they’re like, “What’s up, my nigga?” Or people will be like, “Hey, chola!” I feel like it’s just a slang term that doesn’t have to be offensive. I don’t know if I would be comfortable running a fashion story called, “Nigga!” because people would be like, “What?” [Laughs.] But I think if we did, and we did it tastefully, who knows, maybe it could sit well. I just feel like all these words are being desensitized, and I like what’s happening so they don’t hurt anyone anymore. I just feel like [chola is] an endearing term. And that’s how we used it. Some people might not use it that way, but we meant it as an endearing term.
Now we’re pandering to ethnic stereotypes to sell a magazine?
I need to call my Latin friends and seriously ask if the walk around and say “Hey, Chola” then I need to make a call to my little white cousins and ask them if they walk around saying “What’s up, my nigga?
O.o what is going on withmy dashwhite folks in the world? OMG…..really?! REALLY?!!!!!!!no they fucking didnt.
its cool for everyone but actual fucking mexican women. and nigga is for everyone? REALLY?
what in the entire fuck?!
(Source: blackfashion)
Adventures in advertising fuckery
From the Scottish Woolover print catalog:
Same sweater, modeled on their website:
Which of course means that the super-unfortunate implications of the print-catalog pictures are nullified, because see look, we have a black model!*
I’m not even mad, just rolling my eyes at this.
* Well, a black model besides the apron-and-kerchief rocking woman in the first photos, who of course is probably just really good friends with the pretty lady in the cardigan she’s hugging. :: side-eye deluxe ::
5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged With Battery On Officer [KCRA News]
I was shaking with rage at one point watching the video. Fuck. Fuck.
And yet people are said to be overreacting when they say that there’s a war on against black and brown children in this country.
Can’t even respond to this further, because all that’s coming to mind is a stream of cusswords and despair.
Coorslite Pridefest Parade: An Exercise in Shame [Queer Radical]
Another one bites the dust. This sucks. [Bolding by me.]
Denver’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center of Colorado, also known as, “The Center,” has brokered a profitable deal with the filthy, homophobic corporation, Coors. Hence, Denver will be celebrating the Coorslite Pridefest Parade. There are few things as bizarre as the center of the lgbtq community inviting a mega-booze corporation that keeps our community drunk on shit beer to sponsor an event about celebrating our communities and identities. It’s shameful.
In a community plagued by alcoholism and addiction, struggling for survival by combatting right wing legislation historically funded by Coors, what self-respecting queer could march in a pride parade that mentions a historically anti-gay corporation and does not mention anything in the title about the LGBTQ community?
If the center of the community is so distracted by fundraising that they’re willing to replace LGBTQ Pride with Coors Pride, the center should be removed from a vibrant lgbtq discourse. Let them celebrate with Coors. I will celebrate with LGBTQ people.
Feeling proud to be queer does not require funding. Neither does marching in the street. Let’s support each other with resources, love, and affinity we produce.
We’re wonderful. Shame on The Center and their friends at Coors.
