Thread by @juliaerin80

Rather than posting quotes, let us refocus our efforts during #BlackHistoryMonth to learn and teach about the following:

1) Black people in your town, city, or state who did (or are doing) powerful work to advance the community and/or the culture but have not been supported, amplified, or acknowledged.

2) People of the African diaspora who are not or have not been supported, amplified or acknowledged due to antiblackness and the global after-effects of Colonialism.

3) Black contributions to STEM (both past and present) --an area that historically and presently erases contributions/inventions by those from the African diaspora.

4) Ways to change policies that adversely affect Black students in schools, especially those identifying as LGBTQ+.

4) Cycles of systemic oppression and racism that relentlessly and adversely affect Black people, such as red-lining, the origins of police forces in America, the legalization of Marijuana (or historic mass-incarceration of those who use/sell it)...I could go on.

6) Voter-suppression and disenfranchisement as well as figures both historical (Fanny Lou Hamer) and present (@staceyabrams) who fight back.

Yes, I know that might fall under "systemic oppression" but I felt it deserved it's own tweet due to our current climate.

5) Systemic oppression and racist structures--such as STPP, the origins of the American police force structure, the war on drugs and legalization of Marijuana/criminalization of Black folks who use/sell it, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement...

...and the ways folks are working to dismantle them.

6) Black women past and present who relentlessly work for the betterment of humanity. This could and will be its own thread eventually (and I'm sure not just by me so you have no excuse for missing it).

7) Codes of behavior and patterns of thought within organizational structures that function to perpetuate interpersonal racism rather than dismantle it. See "tokenism", "cultural appropriation" and more.

8) Ways the education system has been weaponized to act as a tool of disenfranchisement and continued racial segregation. See: Mr. Woodson's The Miseducation of the Negro but also Black Skin, White Masks, The Fire This Time and The Fire Next Time, How We Get Free...so many more.

9) Black entrepreneurs and examples of economic success and/or personal or racial uplift. See: Anna Julia Cooper, Madam C.J. Walker...

10) #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool which should be all year and all the time, but does have its official week of action starting right now, t-shirts, and a multitude of other ways to support, get on board.
blacklivesmatteratschool.com

11) Ways Black people always have and always will use various means to dream of and create a more just world for us all--even if only, for now, in the realm of imagination. See "Afrofuturism", "Wakanda"...

I'll make a little collection of some of my favorite resources later this week or month, but I'm excited to see and hear about folks who are not making a bulletin board for the month, then taking it down, tokenizing Blackness or Black students...

...shifting responsibility for learning about Blackness or how to dismantle racism onto Black people, role-playing (shudder), flexing with someone else's recycled quote tweet for social approval. "The work" is definitely complex but these things are not it.

I could drop all the names of people I learn from here, but a)I'm sure I'll forget someone and b)I'm not really a fan of the lists which sometimes come across as appreciation, other times border on...yet another flex. So instead I'll ask folks to examine who they learn from.

If you are an educator and you've only got one Black person--or even two or three--you are willing to learn from, that is a problem. It's especially problematic if they all represent one geographic area or aspect of Black ethnic or social identity. We are not a monolith...✊🏾💞

PS If you're reading this, and you're Black...Love you. Love us. Thank you.🥰

Oh, and I really like these...they're on backorder but buy them all. Get them on double backorder (if that's possible) LOL.
store.urbanintellectuals.com/black-history-…