I also can’t imagine someone getting offended about people mentioning the Tulsa Race Massacre or the fact that the founding fathers held slaves.
Actual racists aren’t going to be offended by those historical facts, they just might argue that they were justifiable in some way. Which is obviously super fucked up, but it’s not like racist people are going to deny the fact that slavery happened or that black people got massacred by white people in history. They literally get off on that shit.
Many racists definitely do get offended by those facts. It’s because they’re coming at it from an emotional place, and the historical facts make them feel bad. Instead of dealing with that, they lash out. Not all racists are intentional about their racism.
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.
Many racists definitely do get offended by those facts. It’s because they’re coming at it from an emotional place, and the historical facts make them feel bad. Instead of dealing with that, they lash out. Not all racists are intentional about their racism.
I link this a lot, but it’s worth a read https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
That wasn’t the intent of the tweet and that is a bizarre misreading of it.
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.