Ruby Bridges was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.
This movie made me cry, I was so heart broken by how Ruby Bridges was treated! She was only 6, but was so strong. She is a very brave girl and she did not care what the white folks called her.
People are simply disgusting to minimize people by skin color!
Ruby you might not think youâre a hero⊠But to other people you are! You are A HERO and you are A PERSON WHO MADE AMERICA CHANGE!
this is white culture, this is their history, this is their legacyâŠbeing enraged at a damn baby just because sheâs black.
sheâs still alive by the way
Ruby Bridges in 2010Â
âAs Bridges describes it, âDriving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.â Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, âShe showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didnât whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and weâre all very very proud of her.âÂ
U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school
As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Ruby and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, âas if she were teaching a whole class.â
Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her;Â because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, allowed Ruby to eat only the food that she brought from home.
Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said âscared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.â At her motherâs suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.â
THIS SHIT WAS ONLY 58 YEARS AGO. PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS RACIST TERRORISM AND ACTS LIKE IT ARE STILL ALIVE, AND THEIR KIDS ARE IN THEIR 40âČS AND 50âČS.Â
DONâT LET RACISM APOLOGISTS GET AWAY WITHÂ âWHY ARE YOU LIVING IN THE PAST,â BULLSHIT ARGUMENTS. WE ARE LITERALLY STILL DEALING WITH THE FAMILIES THAT FORMED HATE MOBS OVER BLACK CHILDREN ATTENDING SCHOOL WITH WHITE KIDS.
I hadnât seen any English reports on this but its too good not to share.
So right now there are pretty crazy right-wing nationalist sexists in Japan. Theyâre dressing up in WWII military outfits, theyâre standing outside of Korean schools (in Japan) shouting that Koreans should be killed, and just generally being horrible human beings. For reasons unknown, the Japanese police havenât done anything to stop them, and when people get physical with the right-wingers and a fight breaks out, itâs not the right-wing people who get punished.
Enter: the Yakuza.
Yakuza, for those who donât know, is the name for the world of Japanese gangs, commonly known for being covered in tattoos. A few retired yakuza members (most of whom are notoriously and vocally conservative) got tired of this extreme right wing BS. They believe that picking on people who are weaker than you, like the children at the Korean schools or refugees, is embarrassing, and not something to be proud of. They want these right wingers to man up (the group is almost entirely men) and shut up.
These old retired yakuzas start showing up at the right wing protests and intimidate the hell out of these guys. When they feel like it, theyâll use physical force too. The police donât mess with the yakuza so these right wing protesters become human punching bags. All their talk of killing Koreans or their superiority to just about everyone flies out the window when these gangsters roll up.
It started with only one or two yakuza who were bored and fed up, but more and more started to come. They started training in boxing and street fighting, and wouldnât you know itâŠthe number of right wing protesters got less and less.
Then, people of other walks of life joined in too. With the yakuza throwing the police off, professors could join by writing about the issues profusely. Suddenly a ton of otakus joined too, using their art and community to protest. Theyâd show up in droves and stand behind the muscle (yakuza) and make a ton of noise. They literally staged an âotakus against racistsâ rally.
Slowly, the protests have seen the right wing attendance drop more and more and I am living for these âmanly menâ being trashed by retired gangsters and fans of Love Live.
In conclusion:
First, Iâd like the extreme right wing to gtfo
Second, Iâd like a manga, then an anime, about these yakuza who befriended professors and otakus to fight neo-nazis. K? cool.Â
and this, my friends, shows you exactly how to deal with fascists.
you intimidate them, you fight them, you let them know that They Are Not Safe and then you outnumber them. you might not be ex-yakuza or whatever, but you can still do it- get buff, work out, train in martial arts, and learn how to hold yourself in an intimidating manner. scare the fash into submission.
Iâve been making jewelry for a number of years now. Pretty early on I was directed to a company called Fire Mountain Gems as a potential supplier. They sent a copy of their catalog with my first order, which introduced me to a *lot* of stones Iâd never heard of⊠more than a few of which had trade names.
Now, understand, humanity has only relatively recently become fussy about how accurately they name their stones. For a big stretch of history, if it was reasonably hard and red OR dark red OR black with red highlights when you tilted it right, theyâd probably call it a ruby. (Example: the Black Princeâs Ruby in the state crown of England, which is a completely different gemstone called a spinel, but they named it before the 1780s which is when we started being able to actually identify rubies as rubies. So⊠yeah.) Some kinds of gem have had lots and lots of different names all historically referring to the same stone. It makes for interesting reading of historic accounts of this or that piece of jewelry. I can excuse it, it was the past, really formal gemology is only a moderately recent thing.
But these days I go to the store and I see yellow gemmy-looking beads hanging on the rack, and I look at the sticker, and it says âyellow jadeâ, only the price is way less than that much actual jade would cost online. Or I go to look for smaller beads to match a few pieces of actual turquoise that I have on hand, and I realize that I have no idea whether African turquoise is actually turquoise or not. It gets⊠irritating. I want to actually know what the hell Iâm paying for and whether itâs hard enough to risk putting it in a bracelet or ring, or whether itâs a softer stone that should be kept in earrings and necklaces, away from possible scratching or impact. If youâre buying jewelry, or if youâre looking for stones for jewelry work, or if youâre someone who believes in the metaphysical properties of stones and crystals, youâre going to want an accurate understanding of whatever it is youâve got in front of you, right? Right.
So, yeah. Hereâs a few of the trade names Iâve been stumbling over since I got started in jewelry making.
New jade – This is serpentine. Itâs a pretty rock but itâs not jadeite or nephrite; itâs not actually jade. Serpentineâs way common, since itâs basically a form of one of the most common minerals in the earthâs crust.
Ching Hai jade – Dolomite plus a couple of other minerals. Pretty, but not jade. Let me put it like this: on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, nephrite jade is 6 to 6.5 and jadeite is 6.5 to 7. Ching Hai jade is 3.5 to 4. This stuff is softer than the outer coating of human teeth (Mohs 5, same as a basic knife blade and most kinds of everyday glass). You want a stone you can put in a ring where itâll get whacked or bounced off hard surfaces or otherwise stand a chance of impact, youâre gonna want real jade. Ching Hai jade will get scratched clear to kingdom come with a Mohs score like that.
Yellow jade – Itâs quartz. Nephrite jade comes in a lot of colors including yellow, but if theyâve labeled it âyellow jadeâ rather than saying âjadeâ or ânephrite jadeâ then itâs quartz. Same deal for âgolden jadeâ.
Malaysia jade – Also quartz.
African jade – yep, still quartz.
Black jade – Both nephrite and jadeite come in black forms, but if a stone is being sold with the name âblack jadeâ, itâs 90% likely to be serpentine. Actual jade gets labeled as jadeite or nephrite. I donât do metaphysical stone foo, but man, if youâre buying a stone because you want to use its mojo, seems to me youâd want to get the actual stone associated with what youâre trying to do, not a stone thatâs the same color and level of shiny.
Peace jade – Serpentine plus white quartz. I donât even know where they came up with this name. Itâs pretty but itâs jade the way a pommel horse is a horse.
Yellow turquoise – Serpentine again. Or rather, serpentine and quartz. At least this stuff comes from the same mines as turquoise.
African turquoise – Jasper. Itâs turquoise colored, but itâs actually harder than real turquoise, for whatever thatâs worth.
Italian onyx – They also call this one onyx marble. Itâs a kind of calcite. Takes dye really well so they use it in different color forms.
African bloodstone / Indian bloodstone – Legit name for the actual stone, for once! These are both names for the same thing. They also call it heliotrope. So any of those names all refer to the same thing.
Tigerskin jasper – And weâre back to the malarkey; this is limestone. With pretty stripes, but seriously, itâs not even jasper and jasper gets used as a substitute for other stones so wtf.
Aqua terra jasper – Onyx marble. They also call it impression stone, but itâs marble, and itâs on the soft side as stones go. Marbleâs around Mohs 3 on a good day. Thatâs another stone you can scratch with your teeth.
Green Earth jasper – NOPE. Serpentine. Sorry.
Peridot jasper – Serpentine. Seriously, do you have any idea how many stones with pretty pretty names are actually just pretty pretty names for different colors of serpentine?
Zebra jasper – onyx marble.
Chinese chrysoprase- Oh look itâs serpentine again
Lemon chrysoprase – This is magnesite. Not dyed, which is a little unusual. Magnesite takes dye really well and gets sold in a lot of colors as a substitute for other stones. Selling it as lemon chrysoprase means someone managed to get hold of a yellowish color of the stuff.
Mosaic turquoise – If itâs labeled mosaic anything, itâs almost always fragments of a stone bound together with resin, and probably not even the stone it claims to be. Mosaic turquoise is ittybitty chips of magnesite thatâs been dyed to match turquoise color, then stabilized together as a single piece. Itâs not even close to being turquoise.
Green opal – okay, quick lesson: there are different kinds of opal, and not all of them have the flashy color changing fire you get with precious stones like Welo opal or Australian opal. Mexican fire opal and Oregon fire opal are good examples of other forms. The actual stone we call opal is a specific kind of silica with a certain level of water content, not just the pretty flashiness. And opals of both the flashy kind and the non-flashy kind do come in green. But if theyâre selling it as âgreen opalâ, they are selling you chalcedony. Chemically similar, but not as pretty, and a distinctly harder stone.
Red malachite – This is marble. They find marble with banding that resembles malachite banding and they cut it and polish it to look like malachite, just in a different color. Malachite is green; this isnât even a thing like jade coming in different colors. There isnât actual red malachite.
Opaline – this isnât even a stone. This is glass. Same deal with âsea opalâ. Sorry. Sometimes they sell chalcedony as opaline but whatever it is youâve found itâs not opal.
Fused quartz – Glass. This is glass. Fancypants glass, but itâs glass.
Goldstone, or blue goldstone: Also glass. With bits of copper in it to produce really nice sparkly effects, but itâs still a kind of glass.
Sand stone or blue sand stone: I only found out recently that some people sell goldstone as âsandstoneâ, so⊠this oneâs glass too. Actual sandstone is a sorta brown sedimentary rock.
Black moss quartz – This is glass. Worth noting, thereâs a vaguely similar product out there called rutilated quartz. Thatâs actual quartz with spindly intrusions of a different mineral, rutile. Difference is, the quartz has a Mohs hardness of 7 and will scratch the âblack moss quartz’sâ soft bitch ass six ways from Sunday as a result.
Fordite – This is paint. Fordite is automotive enamel thatâs dripped onto the same spot on factory floors for so many years that itâs built up to the point where it can be cut and polished and made into jewelry elements. Unlike a lot of trade names, this one isnât a form of bullshit to pass one thing off as another. People who go looking for fordite are specifically looking for gemstone quality layered automobile paint. Sometimes they call it Detroit agate or motor agate, but thatâs more of a joke than an attempt to sell the stuff to people looking for actual agate. I can live with this trade name.
Rainbow calsilica: Apparently thereâs just a huge amount of argument about this and some people say âthis is natural and we found it and itâs got pretty pretty stripes of all different colors just naturally and itâs a totally awesome metaphysical marvel of a totally natural gemstoneâ, but the Journal of the Gemological Institute of America says âdude, you powdered carbonated rock and added paint and stabilized it with resin, wtfâ. So yeah, be warned. I mean, itâs pretty and all, and youâll probably pay way less for it than for chrysocolla (a natural stone with somewhat similar striping), but⊠be aware itâs probably something a guy in a factory or a lab put together, okay?
And citrine: Okay, this isnât exactly a case of trade name bullshittery, but, uh. Natural citrine is stupid rare. Most citrine these days used to be amethyst. Take a crappy piece of amethyst with faint color or gray tones and heat the hell out of it long enough, and it turns yellow, and you can legally sell it as citrine. If youâve got citrine crystals and the yellow color is most intense up in the tips, youâve almost certainly got former amethyst there. Fair warning.
So⊠yeah. Lot of trade names out there. Some of them total bupkis. Some only partly so. Heads up, and if youâre in the market for a gem or a crystal or something like that, do yourself a favor and look up the name somewhere reliable first just so you know what youâre buying.
ugh 
