Guy Emerson Mount Profile picture
Jul 24, 2019 8 tweets 7 min read Read on X
My daughter marching with the spirits of Nelson and Winnie #Mandela outside of the Cradle of Humankind Museum in Mogale, South Africa. It is part of the Long March of Freedom installation, the largest outdoor collection of sculptures in the world. Image
My son got in on the action as well. The installation chronicles over 350 years of South African #anticolonial struggles. It currently depicts over 100 freedom fighters with 400 more in the process of being added. All are in motion. All are marching towards freedom. Image
The procession is organized chronologically and begins in the back with the 17th century leader of the Khoikhoi people, Autshumato, who was the first person to be incarcerated at Robben Island (where Mandala would later spend 27 years). No one stands behind him. Image
Ok, fine, I had to jump in there. But I found it less about placing oneself within the narrative and more about the long wave of history that you got to see roll over you. It was like walking in an activist heaven, with people meeting each other that never could have in IRL. Image
Imagine an action where Shaka Zulu, #MLK, #Gandhi, and an armed #ANC member all showed up together. All the contradictions, complexities, and messiness of the anti Apartheid struggle are on full display. It's a powerful example of a diasporic Black imaginary at work. ImageImageImageImage
Perhaps most inspiring of all is that this is not the work of a single artist (it would have taken a lifetime anyway given the CRAZY love and attention to detail put into each piece). It was part of a huge collective that included master and novice artists. Image
All told, I've really come to rethink my understanding of symbolic #reparations after seeing #publichistory done right here in South Africa. For example, the natural history museum inside had a collage of @Adbusters art that was talking about climate change, poverty, etc. ImageImageImageImage
You simply would not see this kind of overt political messaging within a mainstream natural history museum in the U.S. South African activists are trying to transform every corner of their society...making connections for a public yearning for a better way. ImageImageImageImage

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More from @GuyEmersonMount

Aug 13, 2021
"What if we saw in this data the increasing numbers of racially blended families and mixed-race children – and understood them as signs of a more racially diverse, economically just and culturally rich future? "

This is called mixed race utopianism. It's wack. A quick thread.
Since at least the 16th century settler colonial societies in the Americas imagined the mixed race character of the colonies as some kind of futuristic utopian ideal where the bodies of mixed people would somehow magically lead to a more just world (w/o any affirmative politics).
Mixed race people have continuously been used as America's symbolic embodiment of hope and change---being forced into the role of political props to deny the existence of racism (despite being so brutally subjected to it). The empires of violence that made mixed people get erased
Read 8 tweets
Sep 28, 2020
Can we please stop individualizing and moralizing this.

The 'patriotic' state SYSTEMATICALLY subsidizes the 'owners' of stolen land and labor through a variety of police actions and tax incentives.

Receipts below on how to make tons of money in real estate while paying no taxes
The IRS has "How to tips" to show accountants and wealthy owners how to avoid taxes. It starts with depreciation. Owners of rental property can offset profits by deducting 3.6% of its purchase price per year for 27.5 years even if the value is going up. irs.gov/publications/p…
This means you can buy a rental property for 1,000,000 dollars, it can go up in value by, say, $50,000 but in that tax year it will look like you lost $36,363 (3.6%). Add in deductions for interest payments insurance, maintenance, etc. and you'll usually pay no taxes on rents.
Read 14 tweets
Sep 21, 2020
"Against State Capture" by @AustinMcCoy3 in @TowardFreedom is THE read of the day. So much insight from one of the most caring scholar activists I know. Avoiding elite capture of this uprising is SO important right now (even as it's already happening). towardfreedom.org/story/against-…
"Confrontations with police and attacks on property operate symbiotically with various strategies and tactics that activists and organizations have devised to evade state and electoral capture."---@AustinMcCoy3 on a diversity of tactics.
The notion of “non-reformist reforms” is likewise something that we cannot ever lose sight of. Any demand must ask itself how it is going to deepen and extend this crisis. The risk of falling into well-laid neoliberal traps right now is serious.
Read 10 tweets
Sep 8, 2020
Would you believe me if I told you it was even worse?
Enslavers DID know that they were dealing with fully complicated human beings but decided to regard enslaved peoples as chattel anyway in hopes of destroying that very humanity (while reifying their own).
#AuburnWorldHistory
For proof of this, think about Mary Prince's diary and how often, how arbitrarily, and how much "pleasure" her enslavers took in beating her. They didn't need to treat their cows that way because there was no human spirit to control, condition, and manipulate. @bethany_hadley1
In many ways, the racist notion of enslaved peoples as non-human is an attempt to justify the naked violence that is required to hold human beings in a condition of slavery. #AuburnWorldHistory @bethany_hadley1
Read 4 tweets
Sep 4, 2020
Excellent, balanced review by @JRWinters77 in @BlkPerspectives

I'd only add that, in my reading, critics of #Afropessimism who see it as "a death knell for...the kind of hope and energy needed to confront current problems" don't really understand Afropessimism

It's VERY utopian
It's certainly pessimistic as it relates to OTHER utopian visions (Pan-Africanism, Marxism, feminism, etc.) but only then as it relates to the question of Black ontologies and the capacity to address antiblackness. Destroying capitalism/sexism is part of destroying the world.
In this way I always contend that a better name for those who get hung up on the pessimism part is Afrorealism or Afroskepticism.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 2, 2020
Black grad students @UChicago are joining the #MoreThanDiversity strike by withholding their labor from diversity committees and refusing to help recruit Black students to campus until the university meets their demands for #abolition and #reparations. docs.google.com/document/d/1DO…
The original faculty letter (also calling for abolition and various forms of reparations on and off-campus) can be found here docs.google.com/document/d/1ks…

They also are calling for a full outside boycott of all UChicago sponsored events (seminars, workshops, conferences, etc.).
Additional, specific, reparative demands that are now part of the student letter include increased funding and scholarships for Black grad students, a "formal grievance and reconciliation process" for acts of racism, and grad student participation in university governance.
Read 4 tweets

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