thedeadparrot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thedeadparrot) wrote2020-06-10 07:42 am
thedeadparrot) wrote2020-06-10 07:42 am
Entry tags:
the long arc of history
So as promised, here's some navel-gazing about this current moment in time from someone who isn't black and who isn't a history scholar, so fair warning, this might be all sorts of cringe-y, sorry. But hey, if I can't process my many feelings here, where else am I going to do it?
I guess what I'm thinking about right now is the ways in which we teach about American history right now, and how despite how badly we teach it in many ways, how many atrocities we cover up, how pacifying it's meant to be (racism was over because MLK gave a speech!), it prepared my generation and other generations to take to the street in this moment.
Like, we've managed to encode in white people that racism and bigotry is bad. So bad, in fact, that they have panic reactions over the accusations that they might be, in fact, racist themselves. We've managed to emphasize and encode into people that protest is good and right, even if there's also the encoding of 'good' vs 'bad' protests. The Black Lives Matter protests of five years ago prepared folks for the neverending stream of video of police violence so that folks could see the patterns when the media failed to. The Women's Marches prepared folks to go out in the streets when they never did so before.
And that's lead to these giant, multi-racial protests in the streets everywhere right now and that 'abolish the police' is becoming a mainstream instead of just radical position.
I've seen reminders that replacing the police will not magically fix racism, and that social work has its own history of colonialist violence, but I feel like we still have to recognize the progress that is being made here. Just like the abolition of slavery didn't fix racism and the Civil Rights Act didn't fix racism, we can see the move towards social services as another removal of an arm of institutional violence against black folks. Because those things still helped.
I don't know if we'll ever manage to excise white supremacy from America, and the Trump era has been one of those backlashes that have felt disheartening and exhausting. All the same, I'm seeing how all the little things have been adding up, and it's felt like that long arc bending, ever so slightly, towards justice.
I guess what I'm thinking about right now is the ways in which we teach about American history right now, and how despite how badly we teach it in many ways, how many atrocities we cover up, how pacifying it's meant to be (racism was over because MLK gave a speech!), it prepared my generation and other generations to take to the street in this moment.
Like, we've managed to encode in white people that racism and bigotry is bad. So bad, in fact, that they have panic reactions over the accusations that they might be, in fact, racist themselves. We've managed to emphasize and encode into people that protest is good and right, even if there's also the encoding of 'good' vs 'bad' protests. The Black Lives Matter protests of five years ago prepared folks for the neverending stream of video of police violence so that folks could see the patterns when the media failed to. The Women's Marches prepared folks to go out in the streets when they never did so before.
And that's lead to these giant, multi-racial protests in the streets everywhere right now and that 'abolish the police' is becoming a mainstream instead of just radical position.
I've seen reminders that replacing the police will not magically fix racism, and that social work has its own history of colonialist violence, but I feel like we still have to recognize the progress that is being made here. Just like the abolition of slavery didn't fix racism and the Civil Rights Act didn't fix racism, we can see the move towards social services as another removal of an arm of institutional violence against black folks. Because those things still helped.
I don't know if we'll ever manage to excise white supremacy from America, and the Trump era has been one of those backlashes that have felt disheartening and exhausting. All the same, I'm seeing how all the little things have been adding up, and it's felt like that long arc bending, ever so slightly, towards justice.
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We gotta keep going.
<3
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