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A thread on the word "Spooky" because evidently, it's a big deal 
Dear nonblack allies (mostly the Yts),& I say this just having come back from the cookout & Checking notes with a multitude of generations of Black folk
We Genuinely Don't Care About The Word SPOOKY!
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Dear nonblack allies (mostly the Yts),& I say this just having come back from the cookout & Checking notes with a multitude of generations of Black folk
We Genuinely Don't Care About The Word SPOOKY!
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But black friend, you may ask, shouldn't we be standing up to oppressive language?
Yes, of course- if someone shades us on the scale of "surprisingly well-spoken" to straight-up saying "N*gger" then call that out.
But lets visit the word Spooky & why it doesnt matter
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Yes, of course- if someone shades us on the scale of "surprisingly well-spoken" to straight-up saying "N*gger" then call that out.
But lets visit the word Spooky & why it doesnt matter
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The term Spook was not intrinsically rooted in racism, Spook comes from the Dutch word for apparition or specter which would in WW2 come to be used to denote the Tuskegee Airman by the Germans as "Spookwaffen" (a play on their airmen name of Luftwaffe)
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American Racism being less than clever took the term Spook and began to associate it with blacks. It fell in and out of fashion as a slur but largely was reabsorbed into the lexicon of the American vernacular to just mean once more 'scary' or 'ghostly'
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I, & many others I cross-referenced with, have not ever considered the word when used in the terms of Halloween / being frightened or erie etc as Racist. I asked my Grandmother, an 80+ year old black woman and she laughed at me before saying
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"This generation is so worried about small BS they are missing the big picture"
Now - at this point, if you are someone who was banging the Anti-Spooky drum please don't feel called out, we know mostly your heart is in the right place
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Now - at this point, if you are someone who was banging the Anti-Spooky drum please don't feel called out, we know mostly your heart is in the right place
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The reason I am bringing this up is because, despite good intentions, its honestly a bit of a slap in the face to see so many YTs yelling on social media about the importance of saying "Spoopy" over "Spooky" when we have a lot of bigger more important conversations/causes
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I'm not saying anyone who has done this did so w the intent of getting likes, or the intent of being Woke performatively (while I do believe most major news/blogs/etc are doing so for that reason) I believe those I see doing it are just ignorant to how that looks to us
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When we have just seen social unrest not yet seen since the likes of the civil rights movement over the multitude of public Black executions by police w impunity over the summer, then its hard to swallow people doing light feather lifting around a word we never took umbridge w
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come Autumn.
We know you mean well but please maybe focus on helping us lift the weight of the bodies left in our streets if advocating for true equality and not with a word. Theres heavy lifting to do and we need allyship not performances and keyboard warriors.
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We know you mean well but please maybe focus on helping us lift the weight of the bodies left in our streets if advocating for true equality and not with a word. Theres heavy lifting to do and we need allyship not performances and keyboard warriors.
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