So glad to be here this morning. And, if you know me, you know that setting my alarm for 7am is in itself an illustrative underlining of that statement. Grateful to listen and learn from @alwaystheself today.
https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/1336174554507571202
"She is also a bold influential voice on twitter" - Andrea Kelton-Harris speaking about @alwaystheself [2/]
As she opens @alwaystheself self-positions as someone who has both benefitted from being educated at Harvard & as an avid critic of Harvard. There are already >200+ people on this talk, who Dr. Crystal Fleming notes are likely people who are already (on the path to) taking action 
She notes how uncomfortable we are about to be as she "snatches that wig of white supremacy" to move beyond "BD DEI conversations." "So I'm going to come back to the problems with diversity as a framework." - @alwaystheself [4/]
Dr. Crystal Flemming notes that her first book was on race/racism/white supremacy in France and also notes her newest book #HowToBeLessStupidAboutRace as well. @alwaystheself continues to situate her work and today's conversations in the current moment. [5/]
One of the goals of #HowToBeLessStupidAboutRace by @alwaystheself is to demystify Critical Race Theory for the general public & to share a bit of Dr. Flemming's own journey as a Black woman. She notes that CRT is NOT centered in the dept where she was trained & many depts [6/]
She talks about how she was not born understanding CRT, but that she too had to challenge her own thinking as she learned to work with and apply CRT. (Underlying these words, I hear: This is work. We ALL must do the work.) [7]
One of the things we'll do today is critique DEI & ask many questions about what real, meaningful, sustainable, systemic change can look like and what our roles are in this as individuals and communities. [8/]
"The moment that we're in now is historically rooted and CRT is a great set of conceptual tools for understanding that long durée of racism and anti-racism" - @alwaystheself [9/]
"I do have to confess having a lot of discomfort with the term diversity. And much of that discomfort comes from engaging @SaraNAhmed [...] who pushes us to move beyond diversity as we think about the politics of inclusion and exclusion" - @alwaystheself [10/]
"D&I is all too often the academic equiv of thoughts & prayers. [...]Diversity is a word that is received [by most people] better & far more easily than white supremacy/injustice or words that reveal the power dynamics that create conditions of inequailty" - @alwaystheself [11/]
"Could you talk about racism and anti-racism, but not mention white supremacy?" - Anonymous organizers extending an invitation to speak. "No, that's not possible." - @alwaystheself [12/]
So, what does a systemic understanding of white supremacy look like? What is CRT's relationship to it? -asks @alwaystheself as a transition out of the above story and into her next point. [13/]
"How & why do we still have a politics and a society that is sill dominated by people who are white? How can that be?" asks @alwaystheself, answering that a capitulation to white discomfort is part of why we still are where we are with white supremacy, racism, & antiracism [14/]
As she continues, @alwaystheself traces the historical and contemporary arc of CRT and its central arguments. She talks about how CRT asserts that there is no objective, neutral knowledge that is devoid of meaning in our social world. [15/]
She then moves to discuss white supremacy AS structural. This is an understanding that @alwaystheself connects back to MLK and discusses in our public discourses, representations, and other contemporary products of collective thinking & collective memory. [16/]
She asks us to see these monuments, these representations, etc., to see whose land we're really on, to ask questions about chattel slavery, to move beyond superficial and oppressive forms of patriotism, AND to build upon the generations of activists & advocates...[17/]
...who have been working to push us not only toward equality, but equity [...and recognizing] the inherent worthiness of all lives, not even just human. @alwaystheself situates this in a discussion of the societal challenges we are facing and our likely futures. [18/]
She mentions The Racial Contract and her vivid memory of hearing Charles Mills discuss the epistemology (i.e. knowledge production & understanding) of ignorance and its institutionalization => reproducing its order. [19/]
It is possible to engage in race work, academically and otherwise, without engaging with white supremacy. Dr. Crystal Fleming cautions us against this -- as it forecloses particular possibilities for the societies that many of us are advocating for and working towards. [20/]
"All social categories are historically constructed and made-up, including whiteness [...] the idea of race is modern, particularly the idea that we have a biological belonging [...] these are new concepts & they are particularly pernicious" - @alwaystheself [21/]
"What hasn't shifted over time is the association between whiteness and resources." - @alwaystheself [22/]
"white supremacy is not just in the extremist margins, it is in the very fabric of our society and that is by design. [...] For generations, people in power made decisions that created this power structure and maintained it," - @alwaystheself [23/]
"This is about being a part of racial justice movements [...] and working together to make real structural change [...] The advances we have seen in our society would not have been possible without collective action." -@alwaystheself [24/]
Next: How white supremacy operates in the academy. @alwaystheself: It isn't JUST that we need to diversify our ranks at every level, but that we actually need to shift our relationships to race. Tokenism will not solve this. We must change our cultures, policies, & politics [25/]
This dovetails with the harsh realities of economic dominance and the horrendous racial wealth gap. @alwaystheself also recognizes that this problem includes and extends beyond race: The overall wealth gap writ-large is striking. [And those are made to feed one another.] [26/]
"These gaps did not come out of nowhere [...] and they are not merely created by present day dynamics [...] this is a part of the historical dynamics that have created these disparities" -@alwaystheself and thus they will not easily go away as we address our present moment. [27/]
[The work must be connected to this entire history.] "We should have the caveat: Hispanic is not a racial category, there's a debate around that..." -@alwaystheself notes as she critiques our structures of racism and the problematic aspects of racial categories. [/28]
She also connects the relationship of anti-Semitism and the idea that race and the practice of racial oppression are connected to biologies. She talks about the history of anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism in Europe and the way the former was used to inform the latter. [/29]
She talks about how these histories & racialized xenophobia have been embedded in the founding of many of our systs of citizenship & our overall countries. (I struggle to keep up w/ all of these crit points, so now is prob a good time to note: many holes in this thread.) [30/]
*[28/thread is still going! Whoops!]
*[29/thread is still going! Whoops!]
As @alwaystheself begins to move toward her closing remarks, she asks about how we sustain this work. [My summary:] How do we come together and build structures that fuel and sustain this work? Answer: "Even when it seems impossible, demandez l'impossible." -Angela Davis [31/38]
[Gloss: "Even when it seems impossible, ask the impossible." - Angela Davis] [32/38]
Dr. Fleming continues to remind us to hope: "Hope is a discipline." [My words on what I am hearing from @alwaystheself :] Hope sustains and is sustained by our work as educators, as activists, as scholars. [33/38]
For the white people in the room: "How does white supremacy manifest within your personal & work lives? Do you actively acknowledge your racial privilege & challenge racism?" - @alwaystheself [34/38]
For the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the room: "What resources & stems do you need to thrive?" -@alwaystheself asks, noting that much antiracist work fails to ask BIPOC people what is needed and to give that to them. [35/38]
"Is antiracism integrated into your work resp & criteria for promotion? Do you center the knowledge, voices & diverse needs of Black ppl Indigenous ppl, & ppl of color? Have you ID'd antiracist allies? What systs of accountability hold your institutions & colleagues accountable?"
Closing, @alwaystheself leaves us with this evocation: "We have the power, we together [...]," to create change (I was wrapped up in listening to the closing remarks and missed getting that down in detail! Y'all may have to seek out a recording, if there is one.) [37/38]
Annnnnd that's a wrap! We're on to Q&A and I'm going to close this thread so as to be able to sit in this space, think, and digest the conversation that may now unfold. Deepest gratitude to @alwaystheself for today's talk. 🙏🏻 [38/38, end of thread.]
@threadreaderapp unroll
🚨Missed citation alert! 👆🏻👇🏻
https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/1336355920281006085?s=20
Feels appropriate to link up the original conversation that Dr. Fleming discussed in her talk today:
https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/1268768893289533441?s=20
True to form, here's tweet 39/38 for this thread:
https://twitter.com/jrios808/status/1336353893941391362?s=20[39/38]
And tweet 40/38 (I linked above, but I know how easy it is to miss a comment on a thread as conversations spin-off like proverbial dendrites):
https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/1336355920281006085?s=20[48/38, will there be a 49/38? Only time will tell.]
*[40/38, will there be a 41/38? Only time will tell.] <-- It would appear that time has already told one thing: I skipped my coffee this morning and it shows. 😆
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