Tag: fairness

thechanelmuse:

“Ballet embraces the soft, ethereal and majestic side to women, and yet we often don’t see the media portray black women in this light. My project aims to reveal that women of color possess these qualities. We too are capable of portraying the princess, fairy and swan.”

 —Aesha Ash

Aesha Ash’s prestigious career has included world class roles. Yet she’s now on to a different mission, with three big goals. She wishes to see ballet become more diverse. She hopes to inspire youth from rough areas to pursue their dreams. And she wants to show the world that tough environments can’t hold back talented people, especially those with ambition.

Aesha performed professionally for 13 years. She attended the legendary School of American Ballet; joined the New York City Ballet at age 18; and has danced solo and principal roles for companies like the Béjart Ballet in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Alonzo King Lines Ballet in San Francisco. Now she’s focused on The Swan Dreams Project, in which she uses imagery to tackle stereotypes placed on black women. Aesha commissions photographers to snap her as a ballerina in her hometown of rugged Rochester, New York, and in Richmond, California, and then donates proceeds from photo sales to organizations helping advance inner city youth. She also donates images to organizations for their fundraisers and to people seeking more positive imagery for their children or groups.

The dancer points out that black women have always existed in ballet, yet few become principals, the highest tier of dancers. When Misty Copeland became the first black female principal with the prestigious American Ballet Theatre last summer, Aesha found the milestone a moment to celebrate, yet sad and troubling that in 2016, we’re still celebrating a first. She hopes The Swan Dreams project will give more dancers — and youths in general — the chance to be celebrated for their own talents.

Rochester has one of America’s highest crime rates. But Aesha hits the streets to prove that her hometown is more than violence and gangs. That’s where her Swan Dreams Project comes in. “My community saw that out of our environment came a ballerina, not just negativity — a little black girl from inner city Rochester actually went on to become a professional ballet dancer in a top-tiered company,” Aesha said in a one-on-one interview for this report. “Youth followed me on the street saying, ‘This is what we need. This lifts us up.’”

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asynca:

animate-mush:

jdkaplonski:

shoren18:

damnselfly:

quick protip: if someone is crying or freaking out over something minor, eg wifi not connecting, can’t find their hat, people talking too loud, do NOT tell them how small or petty the problem is to make it better. they know. they would probably love to calm down. you are doing the furthest possible thing from helping. people don’t have to earn expressions of feelings.

I’m just gonna put it out there that if someone’s freaking about something small, they’re really freaking out about something big that they’re trying to deal with, or something long term that’s been building up, and that little thing is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I don’t know, try and give people the benefit of the doubt. Don’t be the next straw on their broken back.

Needed this today.

People don’t actually go from 0 to 60. If you think they did, you have failed to notice how long they’ve been at 59.

People don’t ‘overreact’, they react in exact accordance to how unable they are to cope with something. If how upset/angry they are doesn’t seem to be in line with how objectively small the problem is, there’s two things to consider: 

1. As per the previous post, the small thing that’s happened is the straw that broke the camel’s back. They’ve barely been able to manage coping with everything else in their lives, and this ‘tiny’ thing is something they just don’t have any energy left to cope with. 

2. You haven’t understood the weight of what has gone wrong. Maybe their wifi isn’t connecting and they won’t be able to speak to the one person who is able to comfort them. Or their phone is out of battery and now they won’t get a call about that job they wanted. Or maybe they’ve been genuinely triggered by something. 

Remember: no one ‘overreacts’. You’ve just made a personal, subjective judgement that their reaction to something should be more like your personal reaction to it, which is unfair. People are all different and have different experiences. Instead of being judgemental and unhelpful and telling them to calm down and not overreact, try to understand why their reaction is so strong. Then perhaps you can actually help them. 

Pulse Nightclub Survivors Joined Parkland Students to Rally for Gun Control

seriesofnonsequiturs:

Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took several buses to meet with lawmakersin Tallahassee, Florida, on Tuesday, February 20. The survivors-turned-activists, who have mobilized since the February 14 shooting that left 17 dead in Parkland, Florida, weren’t alone as they traveled to put pressure on state representatives to pass gun control measures.

They were joined by four survivors of the 2016 Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida, according to the Palm Beach Post. The Palm Beach Post published a photo of the survivors of the two attacks hugging they boarded a bus to the state capital.

Pulse Nightclub Survivors Joined Parkland Students to Rally for Gun Control

rebel-timelord:

wetwareproblem:

wetwareproblem:

Unfriendly fucking reminder that the best predictor of mass shootings is not mental illness, but being an angry young white man who has recently experienced rejection and has easy access to guns.

Bringing this back because it makes terrible people angry. And I’ll add a note to all the people saying “But you’d have to be mentally ill to do that!”: Mental illness is, by definition, abnormal. Does “mediocre white boy is so entitled that he resorts to violence when told no” really sound particularly unusual to you?

I devoted my entire graduate studies and thesis on mass school shootings, multiple murderers, and criminal psychology and I can tell you that this is in fact completely true and is suported by an unbelievable amount of emperical, quantifiable data that I slaved over for years. 💯