The idea that white supremacy is a uniquely Southern tradition persists despite the fact that many of the most ferocious battles against white supremacy by its black victims and their allies were fought here, precisely because the white population of of the South, especially the white elite, benefits from that idea. Because if we recognize that white supremacy is something that Southern whites (and again, white elites especially) have brutally intervened to maintain here for centuries instead of some natural, immutable part of Southern culture, we would recognize that white supremacy can be fought and can be destroyed.
In the 16 years of education I’ve had in North Carolina so far, I never once learned that the only successful coup in US history was in Wilmington, NC in 1898, when white supremacists overthrew the pro-civil rights fusionist local government to put a racist Democratic government in place, killed countless people, terrorized black communities and whites who were sympathetic to them, burned down the building of the state’s only black newspaper, and drove over 2,100 black people out of the city for good. It was never mentioned once.
Really, we had to take multiple classes about North Carolina’s history and all they taught us was “we grew tobacco and indigo, we fought the British, there were some slaves, then the slaves were free, the end.”
I went through school in Virginia, and this sounds eerily familiar. Swap Pocahontas mythology for the indigo, and yammer on repeatedly about being The First Permanent English Colony, and that about covers it next colony over too.
You cannot challenge racism, on this level, by being nice to and reaching out to white supremacists. Their entire ideology revolves around dehumanizing us. It just does. not. work.
You cannot fight fascism by prioritizing the feelings of fascists and letting them think they’re safe around you. You don’t “get them on your side”. Because treating them kindly and respecting them, gives them your silent approval and access to those of you who are way more vulnerable than you are and who cannot afford to feel safe enough to “debate” with these monsters.
Our humanity is not a question or a debate topic, and by giving these people a platform you legitimize their views and help spread them to a larger audience.
Then… How did it work for this guy?
They shot him in the fucking head.
Say that shit again!
They shot him in the fucking head.
They shot him in the fucking head.
They shot him in the fucking head.
They shot him in the fucking head.
The idea that MLK was ‘nice’ to white supremacists is also just historical revisionism @kuurihaunt.
He was sent death threats. The FBI considered him dangerous. People assaulted and murdered many of his followers. White America thought he was too confrontational and not appeasing enough to the sensibilities of whites. He was considered disruptive and an “outside agitator.” He was not a beloved man. He was hated and despised.
His protests came with the risk of being brutalized or killed by police or vigilantes. He decried the white moderate for caring more about order than justice. He refused to condemn riots, ‘the language of the unheard,’ because of how violent America was to Black people. Despite their differences, Malcolm X offered him protection and self-defense. Even though he was committed to nonviolent resistance, which meant breaking the law, disrupting traffic and yes – willingly opening yourself to being brutalized, he was more complicated than you give him credit.
The United States hated him and for his troubles he was killed.
He was not the caricature of nonviolence you think he was. Read a fucking book.
It worked for Nelson Mandela,
Didn’t it? If he hadn’t forgiven people (which shows he was such a good man, because I wouldn’t have forgiven those people if I were him), apartheid would never have ended
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for being part of an anti-apartheid militant communist organization.
this post gets sadder and sadder tbh
… Okay, I know that we’ve spent a lot of effort remaking MLK into an inoffensive “feel-good” figure who beat racism by just being so gosh-darned nice, but who’s clueless enough to think Nelson Fucking Mandela stopped Apartheid by being friendly at it?
Hey, FYI–if you sign up for that free credit monitoring, set a Google reminder to go cancel it this time next year or else Equifax will apparently require a credit card to begin the free protection and beging automatically charging you for it after the year is up. It looks like the service currently runs $20/month/person, which is a lot to begin with, but will add up real fast if you sign up multiple members of your household.
I don’t begrudge anyone wanting to use the service, and I don’t even begrudge Equifax for offering the service for a fee after a year, but it is sleazy as heck to make it an opt-out rather than opt-in when they’re ostensibly offering this as a service to help correct a wrong, not an enticement to try their service.
(I’m not even going to get into the arbitration clauses, because at this point I just assume all companies use them regardless of how utteely sleazy they are).
1920s crime lord Tilly Devine was born on this day in 1900. She and fellow crime boss Kate Leigh fought for years in one of history’s most amazing feuds.
Their story was also covered on an Australian TV show, Underbelly: Razor, which was, to quote one reader, “trashy beyond measure.” You can catch a clip of it on YouTube here.
That particular building was also the legacy of bad ‘70s architectural experiments. Well before I got there, they’d had to add wall partitions for classrooms. Because it started out with a totally open plan pod design, with space for something like 10 classes all run together around an atrium in each pod (with multiple pods around another atrium).
But, there wasn’t that much they could do about the totally windowless design. So yeah, there was absolutely no way to even open the windows and let some of the concentrated smoke out. (That was also the only school I went to with even badly working AC. Because no windows, and it started out just a big sweatbox before they had to add the AC for health and safety reasons. Extra glad I wasn’t there the first few years after it was built…)
May not have been able to breathe during forest fire season, but by golly students weren’t going to be staring out the windows! 🙄
Besides the destruction, I really feel for all the people with breathing problems in areas affected by the wildfires out West.
It’s gotten rough enough back home a number of times, with seemingly half of WV on fire again and prevailing wind patterns funneling a bunch of the smoke straight down into the New River Valley. Which is prone to fun inversion layers anyway.
A few weeks one fall when I was in high school was the worst time I can remember, especially with the school’s shitty HVAC system actually concentrating the smoke inside the building 😵 With significant asthma problems from it, of course, and I was hardly the only one who couldn’t breathe. It was bad enough everywhere else. That school shouldn’t have stayed open, and I’m amazed in retrospect that nobody’s parents kept them out for their safety that I knew of. (And people no doubt would have been talking about it, not wanting to be there wheezing and choking either.) Guess they didn’t believe the air quality could really be that much worse inside the school if it was staying open. Because kids 😐 But, all of those forest fire seasons look like sparkling clean air, compared to large chunks of the Western US right now. It’s scary to think about from a distance, and I do wish there were something we could do to help people there on the ground.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.