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Museums are literally part of the problem. Idk if there's anything they can do rn besides reparations and repatriations especially as many of them are currently committing labor violations disproportionately affecting their Black staff https://twitter.com/latinainmuseums/status/1266312122146926593
Six years ago @CollardStudies and I tried to raise awareness about anti-Blackness in museums and by and large they told us to go to hell only to co-opt our labor in ways more palatable to the audiences they valued.
Museum culture is for the most part inherently anti-Black and rotted to its foundations. What can they be possibly do for the public that is helpful or restorative when they refuse to treat their Black employees like human beings?
When museums are run, staffed, and trusteed by the Karens and Chets of the world what hope is there for sincerity? Why should Black people trust them or believe they have our best interests at heart when they can't even take the smallest accountability for their harm?
Many museum workers really believe in their workplaces' altruistic missions but can't see past their own fragility to acknowledge how their biases harm the public they claim to serve and reinforce toxic internal cultures. What can people like that do for me except leave me alone?
When Black museum workers suffer, their employers don't give a shit. We're supposed to be grateful to be there. If we don't perform Blackness in palatable ways, our suffering increases exponentially. Death by a thousand cuts. No public program is gonna fix that.
Museums asked all the wrong questions of all the wrong people after Ferguson and now, in the midst of this pandemic, they're displaying levels of abject cruelty that has truly ripped the masks off. They don't deserve us. They deserve dissolution.
