If you are a non-Black person in conversation about the Civil Rights Movement with a Black person, please do not do this! I didn’t learn about the suffering of my people for critical analysis or to build arguments, but for my survival. I live this. It’s wildly disrespectful to my experience.
Clearly I need to teach more children about civil rights before I can demonstrate as much knowledge as him. Silly me, thinking that the generational knowledge of my family could even compare
When I wrote my APUSH final paper on white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement and why Selma was the last movement victory, I guess I didn’t understand the question!
Ironically my actual white HS history teacher told me he would have made my paper assigned reading if the coursework took us that far
Almost like he respected me as a person
That's because he's a decent person. When we deal with racists, yeah like that guy... they always come out condescending, because they haven't gone completely insane yet like the MAGA crowd.
Nah, I would block. Bluesky is a great platform and the moderation tools are great. But when bad actors jump ship from the dying X, we don't need to waste our time with them.
I was about to write out that I cannot understand how white people think of the actual lived experiences of BIPOC as useful thinking exercises for their classrooms, instead of, you know, real, harrowing, truthful stories of people's lives.
Except I totally can.
Racism is a powerful drug.
And the most galling part is that he probably thinks he's being antiracist by teaching this stuff.
Particularly based on how he phrased his whole "you're wrong" message to you.
fuck.
“Instead of stripping the history out entirely, I present it as a thought exercise for white children to determine whether direct action from Black people or reluctant lawmaking from white politicians was responsible for ending legal segregation. I’m such a good person!”
also it took me an unreasonably long amount of time to figure out he wasn't a BTS army member.
... which made the whole "let's talk about Black American history like it didn't happen to actual human beings" thing even weirder.
THAT was the either/or?!
He teaches civil rights by pretending it's the chicken or the egg puzzle? Which doesn't even match metaphorically, but he's trying. And in front of someone for whom this isn't abstract theory.
Yiiiiiikes
can you imagine?
It'd be like teaching WWII as an either/or the Hiroshima bombing ended everything OR the Battle of Kursk (eastern front) was what did the Axis in.
Like... it'd probably make his white man brain explode.
“as a white cis male, please understand that my experience grading history papers far outweighs your lived experience as a Black woman along with your relatives and ancestors and allows me to explain your life to you better than you ever could. sorry, that’s just how the Aryan cookie crumbles”
I literally saw how gross you were to her. Your condescension was disgusting even had you been right, which you were not. She knows more about the Civil Rights Movement than you do.
But yeah, 😂 I’m the “fucking idiot.”
I guarantee your students see right through you. Teenagers are smart.
White people are born experts, there’s no way the rest of us can catch up, even on topics and experiences that we create! Luckily, we had the gift of the white man to set us straight
Ho. Ly. Shit. The amount of arrogance to type out “I hope you enjoy your opinion. It's wrong, but that's only because you don't understand the question” is staggering.
I mean, I love the West Wing but I also know the very very conservative limits of that show (which is literally political fantasy) and I hope he's not taking it seriously.
