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Clint Smith @ClintSmithIII
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
I know that we live in an era of endless hot takes & quickly espoused opinions, but sometimes I wish there was more currency—or at least more acceptance—of the moments where instead of coming up with quick opinions or predications people could just say, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
There’s really something to be said for saying “I don’t know the answer, but I hope to learn about it!”

I think about this as a teacher all the time, how to model for students that it’s okay to take time to read & research & then form an opinion rather than making an empty claim
Twitter in particular can make it feel like you should comment on everything that’s happening, & incentivizes ppl to position themselves as experts on things they actually don’t know a lot about.

Always worth remembering it’s okay not to comment on everything, better to listen.
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2019 marks the 400th year since enslaved Africans were brought here, before this was even a country. Black people have only had any semblance of full citizenship for about 50 yrs. I don't think the public always grasps the enormity of state-sanctioned oppression on that timeline.
If you kick someone for 350 years, and then stop kicking them (but really just kick them in a different way) for a *seventh* of the amount of time you spent kicking them, it would be completely disingenuous to look at the person and be like, "What's wrong with you? Just get up."
I just think it's worth reflecting on the incessant, intergenerational violence that black folks in this country have experienced, and the sheer amount of time they've experienced it for. All things considered, it's remarkable what our community has done in spite of this history.
Read 3 tweets
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I’m always struck by ppl who express admiration for those like Douglass & Tubman while labeling policies that attempt to build a more just & moral society “unrealistic.” Do these ppl think abolishing slavery was widespread & popular policy proposal in the 19th century? It wasn’t.
The US had quite literally never existed w/o the institution of slavery alongside it. The first enslaved Africans arrived in 1619 & the US became an independent nation in 1776.

Abolition required imagining a country that had never existed, a radical reconception of the republic.
So when I see ppl who express admiration for something like the abolition of slavery, but who turn around & say that something like The Green New Deal is unrealistic, it seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of how meaningful social change has ever happened in the country.
Read 4 tweets
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as the year comes to a close something worth considering is that some of the "we've never been so divided" narrative exists bc many groups of historically marginalized ppl are voicing concerns they have long expressed, but it's only now that certain ppl are beginning to hear them
if your analysis of our country never included the voices of women, immigrants, black ppl, indigenous ppl, the lgbtq community, muslims, or any ppl living at the intersection of those identities, then maybe it comes as a surprise that a lot of ppl are, and have long been, fed up
if you close your eyes for long enough some people can convince themselves that oppression is no longer there, but closing your eyes doesn't make something disappear, it just means you were choosing not to see what was right in front of you
Read 3 tweets

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This is very true. And what the police have experienced here has been awful. Protesters have attacked them with hammers. With slingshots, using steel balls as projectiles. They've thrown firecrackers at them, they've been exhausted, hungry, and given conflicting orders--
Read this blog post from a cop who says he was at the CdG Etoile last week. (I haven't verified his identity. It sounds truthful, but I don't know). Loosely translated highlights: blog.francetvinfo.fr/police/2018/12…
"Apart for some of the guys who’ve worked in Corsica or the worst neighborhoods of Paris, Saturday was the worst day we’ve ever seen. A wave of violence that didn’t stop ... The idea? Break the cop, simply. No matter what means they used, they only had that in mind."
Read 25 tweets
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I want to talk about the editorial support you should expect from an agent who says they work editorially, &what you should not expect, too. (As always these are my opinions; others will think differently; you can take any opinion you encounter or burn it in a trash can.) #Thread
Most agent offer calls come with a discussion about editorial support and expectations on both sides. If an agent says they work editorially, both of you can talk about what you hope this will look like. This may include:
Rounds of overall revision to plot/character/structure/setting, or tightening to a genre guideline, based on an "edit letter."
Line edits/sidebar comments by your agent. I always stress these are suggestions to achieve a goal. How author arrives at that goal is up to to them, but
Read 17 tweets
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Struggling to decide if this is French ppl having a pb:

-w/ a muscular woman’s body
-w/ a black body transgressing classist expectations, re: changing ‘rules’
-w/ a BW’s skin & legs not being available for consumption

Maybe all. Whatever it is, this is about you your place.
In France more than anywhere I have been in Europe, womanhood is wrapped around thinness & slightness.
The size of the female body* has for as long as I can remember, a way to police the boundaries of class & race.
Read 19 tweets
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I have some strong opinions about how best to study for comps that come both from my own comps but also from years of coming up with comps questions & administering comps at Notre Dame. So, a thread:
Students generally worry about reading and retaining the material. I know I did. But that's putting the focus on the wrong part of the process. The bigger question is, can you use the material in an interesting way.
So let me back up for a minute. When done properly, studying for comps is a very useful experience, one which stays with you. When I was on the job market, doing interviews, I used a lot of both my comps material and the experience of taking the exam in job talks.
Read 17 tweets
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One day I got a DM from Donjazzy saying he loved my story, I almost fainted but I had to remain alive to go verify if it was the original Donjazzy, "it's him!" I said when I verified.

"Thank u🙏" I replied, "Let's meet up" he wrote.

I fainted!

It's Donjazzy Again IDJA

THREAD
I woke up immediately & saw my DM still open, "it's actually real, Donjazzy DM'd me!" I screamed, I immediately replied to say I was available & he texted me where to meet him.

I closed my app, dropped my phone & went to have my bath. While at it I remembered my crush Kemi..
I had been 'toasting' her for 3 months now & I promised myself that once she says yes I'd breakup with Kiki, "Maybe I'll take a picture with Donjazzy & send to her so that she'll like me more" I thought.

I finished having my bath, dressed up, grabbed my stuff & headed out proud.
Read 70 tweets
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"The study failed to replicate" is something I often hear, usually with the implication the original study must have been bad, or had something wrong with it.

This is a bad misunderstanding of what failure to replicate means.
An example: In 1995, Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman produced an amazing new form of matter, the world's first Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%8… ) They quickly won the Nobel Prize (2001) for this.
In 2000 I was visiting the laboratory of an atomic physicist. His main project was to produce BEC. He'd spent 4 years, perhaps 10,000 hours of staff time (including much of his own), & hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.

He'd seen absolutely nothing.
Read 15 tweets

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