Read on Twitter
*Response Thread*
you are totally right that millions of Black Americans have been let down by the state as far as education is concerned. HOWEVER, you are making two critical mistakes in your assessment, and I think that’s confounding the message you’re trying to shape. (1/n) https://twitter.com/akintundeahmad/status/1273324531105492997
you are totally right that millions of Black Americans have been let down by the state as far as education is concerned. HOWEVER, you are making two critical mistakes in your assessment, and I think that’s confounding the message you’re trying to shape. (1/n) https://twitter.com/akintundeahmad/status/1273324531105492997
The first is the underlying implication that, because illiteracy is a serious obstacle facing our community, we are wrong for calling on everyone to do what they can to engage these texts. (2/n)
Regardless of your misgivings towards “woke” twitter (which, let’s be honest, is just a stand-in for mostly Black queer/cis and trans women activists online who are unafraid to speak frankly about their experiences under both patriarchy and racism, and the role that many (3/n)
cis Black men, willingly or otherwise, play in their daily oppression but that’s for another day), it is disingenuous to assume that Black people, including those of us who are illiterate, are not (and have not) been finding all forms and methods to gain access to education (4/n)
This thread by @queersocialism is but one example of this historical and ongoing work. (5/n) https://twitter.com/queersocialism/status/1273713022540951553?s=21
Second, though you didnt explicitly mention it, it does seem that the posting of this thread has an interesting coincidental timing with the release of J.Cole’s latest track, and especially the subsequent backlash from the same “woke twitter” that you referred to. (6/n)
That you posted this, in seeming direct repudiation to the countless black women who called out his subtle (not that it was to anyone who gave the song a listen) tone policing and misogynoir, is feeding into the very same thing that so many of us are calling him out for. (7/n)
Remember, while Black men may have unacceptably high rates of illiteracy as a result of the historical trends you mentioned, for many of these “woke” Twitter users (who, as I said, are mostly queer PoC, esp. Black women, who have done the hard work of engaging literature), (8/n)
these rates also hold for Black women as well (a fact which, for some reason, you neglected to mention at all during your thread. In fact, you didn’t mention ANYTHING about Black women, their literacy rates,or any obstacles shared between them and Black men, at ALL. Why is that?)
View the raw data for this article. Black boys AND girls are both being undercut by this system - not even considering that AAVE/Ebonics doesnt lend itself to accepted common grammar rules, when many of these young minds are quite literate and able. (9/n) https://calmatters.org/education/2017/05/data-exclusive-75-of-black-california-boys-dont-meet-reading-standards/
Additionally, the fact that Black men (regardless of literate ability or reading level) continue to maim and murder Black women at alarming rates is slightly more of a pressing issue to them - not least, might I add, because of the same tone policing of their actions/words (10/n)
(“stop condescending to us”, “y’all are so elitist”, Black women act all “holier than thou,” etc) creates a culture in which demeaning, degrading, and erasing Black women’s voices (through any means necessary, including violence) is encouraged, or at the very least, not (11/n)
vigorously suppressed by the majority. We need more cis Black men to be actively centering all Black women’s oppression when we talk about achieving racial equity. (12/n)
You’ve gotta think about your experiences with other Black women (particularly queer and trans Black women), and reflect on how you may have erased/harmed them (intentionally or otherwise) through your attempts to address the suffering of cis Black men. (13/n)
We cannot afford to solely focus on the plight of our cis brothers under white supremacy and capitalism, while casting our sisters and nonbinary folk off to the side. Esp. with your degrees from several prestigious institutions, you have to do much better. (14/14)
