A quote from #BlackIsKing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about:

“No more white angels, only albinos.”

I see so many parallels between #1619Project and #BlackIsKing . @nhannahjones re-writes the white narrative of Black history in America while @Beyonce connects Black Americans to a proud ancestry independent of slavery.

Someone smarter than me should write this thread/article.

Black history written by WP ultimately centers WP in the narrative - usually from the POV of WP talking about the pain and suffering we’ve inflicted upon BP.

@nhannahjones and @Beyonce center BP in a way that makes WP irrelevant to the narrative, and both focus on achievement.

I suspect this is a big part of the blowback from WP re: both projects. WP claim ownership over early American history and cannot fathom being irrelevant in that history. Similarly, WP could never imagine Black history independent of slavery/the victimization of BP by WP.

The idea of BP being proud of themselves/their rich history is simply not a concept that has ever existed in formerly white-dominated spaces like NYT/Disney. To WP who have internalized the Black victim narrative, the mere existence of these projects shakes them to their core.

The fact that it took until 2019/2020 to tell these stories on mass media platforms is damning in itself, but will open the floodgates for BP to begin publicly reclaiming their heritage and history in a way that BP themselves get to define.

Again, I am the wrong person to write this thread. But as a WP it is astonishing the extent to which we’ve been lied to about BP regarding their history and culture. And if we’ve been lied to about that, what else is a lie?

(Spoiler: almost everything)