Whiteness is a Prosthesis

To be "white" is to be an amputee; it indicates the place from which something is missing, something that comprises a vital part of the function of the organism. Whiteness is a prosthesis, a cumbersome replacement for a living organ, the cultural organ, the part of a human being that is defined by its relationship to others-the social organ. To be Swedish or Portugese or Angelino or New Yorker is to be someone or something but to be White is to be nothing at all. Its only function is to demarcate the absence of a culture. 
   This must be why, as is so often the case, Whiteness is defended by such desperate and brutal violence-its true believers must use violence in the service of Whiteness because they know on some level the superficiality and flimsiness of Whiteness as a category. Whiteness lacks the substance to be defended in any other way than by violence. Whiteness is more ideology than identity, and it is defended like one. 
   To be born white in the United States is to some degree to be born White, to be born with a prosthesis. Some are born whole; others like Punks, try to remove their inherited prosthesis and fit themselves with one of their own design. Many limp along with ill-fitting ethnic prostheses. Everyone recognizes that the prosthesis they are fitted with at the start constitutes, among other things, a handicap to their own mobility.

SnapSF

Because i work in downtown San Francisco and am surrounded at all times by beautiful well-dressed people, i have decided to start a street fashion blog. Look at snapsf.blogspot.com if you're "curious".

A PRETTY GIRL is like A PRETTY GIRL

People say Beauty lies. People say Beauty is deceptive. But that's neither entirely fair nor entirely true-Beauty only says what it says, the only thing it can say. Beauty is like a Pokemon. Or like a fact of nature.
   It's not beauty that deceives, but people. Especially people with an agenda. 

   Lots of people loathe or distrust beauty because it's used so often by people with an agenda. I do too, sometimes, but other times I feel bad for Beauty. It's not Beauty's fault. Capitalist consumerism didn't invent beauty, they just whored it out, like they do with every other human experience. 
     Just because they've commodified it doesn't mean you can't get it for free, too.

We Don't Want To Be Anarchists Anymore

    I took a walk with a friend the other day. A relatively recent emigree to the east bay, her life was in the midst of a down-shift; she had gone recently from holding down two jobs and attending school to just the one and, without much connection to a social or artistic or political scene in her new home, all the unfilled time in her life was beginning to intimidate her.

The Gift

    When I was a teenager I believed in Hate. I believed in it the way religious people believe in their stories, or the way young people always believe in what they believe in; it was an organizing principle. It was my armor against the meaninglessness and ugliness of the world I was born into (which is that much more meaningless and ugly, when you’re young), the means by which I distinguished my kind, my allies, from the mass of Enemies I lived among.