Read on Twitter
The stereotype that our black siblings here in the US "really like watermelon and fried chicken and sitting on the stoop" only exists in the *North*. Anyone who'd actually been to the South would know those are Southern Things(TM), not Black Things(TM)
1/? https://twitter.com/beccalew/status/1314448398888574976
1/? https://twitter.com/beccalew/status/1314448398888574976
As a little kid from backwoods Florida who moved to DE/PA, I was surprised. That's what *everybody* eats and how *everyone* hangs out Down South. It's just Yankees never encountered our culture till the Great Migration. So they assumed it was a peculiarity of black folk.
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Now, evidently, we have journalists surprised to discovering that people in the out in the country don't give a damn about how their yards look.
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My grandparents had the most amazing garden you could imagine, on the most massive, multi-acre plot of wooded land you could imagine. We ate like kings at Sunday Dinner.
My grandfather was a carpenter who built the house they lived in.
4/?
My grandfather was a carpenter who built the house they lived in.
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And they had multiple cars on cinder blocks in the woods that abutted their front yard. Beside the open septic tank.
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In other words, the tweet to which this thread is responding feels like, "City/Northern folk making huge assumptions after meeting one person from the country/South."
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It's just . . . no one who grew up outside a city would look at that yard and see evidence of economic oppression. Anyone from the country would see the yard and think, "Yep, that's how many of us prefer to live. There are more important things in life than a lawn."
So, when Mr. Bragman says, "No one is fated to be a far right terrorist. This is learned and fostered by governmental neglect," I think, "Oh, friend. Oh friend. Friend."
8/?
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I remember when the County gov decided to stop neglecting us. They put in road signs on our dirt road.
We were livid. We went out and pulled up those dang oppressive road signs and threw them on the ground. You weren't going to integrate us into the county road system!
9/?
We were livid. We went out and pulled up those dang oppressive road signs and threw them on the ground. You weren't going to integrate us into the county road system!
9/?
To put it another way, it sounds to me like Mr. Bragman's tweet is advocating that what we need to fix right wing extremism is for urban governments to send out missionaries to the Forrest Folk. A kind of Urban Savior Complex.
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I don't think that's what he means, given later tweets in the thread. He means that poverty and economic oppression suck, and create a situation in which extremism can seem like a way out.
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I guess what annoys me, therefore, is that he looks at that yard and thinks, "These poor people are clearly having a hard economic time," when I would look at that yard and think, "These people are clearly living what they think is their best life."
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Or, to put it another way, if you look at that yard and think, "If only these people had more money, they would make themselves and their lawn more presentable and respectable," I think you don't understand what Country Living(TM) is like.
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That being said, I agree with Mr. Bragman that the material conditions of living outside suburbia can lead to a feeling of isolation, of disconnection from broader civic society. Just remember that it's possible to prefer/enjoy isolation and disconnection.
14/14
14/14
Wow, tweet #3 in this thread has some impressive typos. :-(
