now is a great time to remind all minorities just how important it is for us to occupy our own fields of cultural and historical study. there’s a huge loss and risk of revisionism to be faced when these fields become populated by those who aren’t members of the relevant community

it’s incredibly detrimental to the wellbeing of communities when the limited and already considered niche areas of study relating to minorities is spoken for by those who take up far too much space and yet show no support to the relevant communities they’re intrigued by.

interest is arguably a necessary but certainly not a sufficient requirement for being the spokesperson of any small community’s history, culture or language, particularly when those cultures are alive and surving against the odds.

i say this to say: i want to see more kurdish alevis studying and writing about alevism, more yezidis in yazdanism & more assyrians in assyriology. you can be obtuse by force and make a vague counter-argument. i know you all know exactly what i mean though.

it sucks too, actually. bc the smallest minorities existing under oppressive regimes are also the most disenfranchised and least able to access the education and resources to educate others. you ever wonder why we often rely on word-of-mouth accounts of our history?