That’s a cute comic, thanks for that. I see what you mean, and I could see that happening with the Tulsa Race Massacre because a lot of people actually never learned about it. But not so much with the founding fathers holding slaves, because everyone already knows that.
Unfortunately, I still disagree with your assertions here on a number of levels. It seems to me that you’re tilting at windmills in service of a tweet that inherently makes no sense.
I understand that wasn’t the intent, which is why it seemed to me that the authors understanding of black history was coming from an extremely shallow perspective. I didn’t misread anything, I simply have a more advanced conception of what history is.
If history is defined by excluding all of the bad things that happened, then it’s not actually history, it’s just fairy tales and bedtime stories to help kids sleep at night.
I read the tweet as saying “Actually learning about history, the good and the bad, is better than avoiding it to whitewash (pun intended) slavers and spare their feelings”
How did you read it?
This also reminds me of a separate post I saw about how social media, and tweets especially, is a really bad format for communicating. The length constraints and incentivizing being clever don’t make for fertile ground for ideas. Most people aren’t going to read an essay, sadly.
It just didn’t make sense to me. I don’t think talking about historical slavery necessarily makes racists feel bad and/or non-racists feel good. It’s just a horrible reality all around, it’s not really an empowering or liberating discussion on any level.
I totally agree with the difficulty communicating, I have been thinking that a lot of my issue with this is likely due to the limitations of the microblogging format, which I have always found to be very silly. I usually can’t express how I really feel with 1000 words, let alone 140 characters. So misinterpretation is inevitable. And honestly that’s probably part of the stickiness of the format, because misinterpretations drive engagement on corporate social media.
That’s a cute comic, thanks for that. I see what you mean, and I could see that happening with the Tulsa Race Massacre because a lot of people actually never learned about it. But not so much with the founding fathers holding slaves, because everyone already knows that.
Unfortunately, I still disagree with your assertions here on a number of levels. It seems to me that you’re tilting at windmills in service of a tweet that inherently makes no sense.
I understand that wasn’t the intent, which is why it seemed to me that the authors understanding of black history was coming from an extremely shallow perspective. I didn’t misread anything, I simply have a more advanced conception of what history is.
If history is defined by excluding all of the bad things that happened, then it’s not actually history, it’s just fairy tales and bedtime stories to help kids sleep at night.
I’m glad you liked the comic.
I read the tweet as saying “Actually learning about history, the good and the bad, is better than avoiding it to whitewash (pun intended) slavers and spare their feelings”
How did you read it?
This also reminds me of a separate post I saw about how social media, and tweets especially, is a really bad format for communicating. The length constraints and incentivizing being clever don’t make for fertile ground for ideas. Most people aren’t going to read an essay, sadly.
It just didn’t make sense to me. I don’t think talking about historical slavery necessarily makes racists feel bad and/or non-racists feel good. It’s just a horrible reality all around, it’s not really an empowering or liberating discussion on any level.
I totally agree with the difficulty communicating, I have been thinking that a lot of my issue with this is likely due to the limitations of the microblogging format, which I have always found to be very silly. I usually can’t express how I really feel with 1000 words, let alone 140 characters. So misinterpretation is inevitable. And honestly that’s probably part of the stickiness of the format, because misinterpretations drive engagement on corporate social media.