So the boys were called racial slurs by a fellow camper (who was asked to leave). Gonna make this a starting point for my next @SatEvePost column, so just a couple things here. (NB. They had an amazing time as ever & are stoked for next year when Aidan'll be a proto-counselor!)
First, it happened 'cause they were awesome allies! Jackassclown was insulting a Chinese American camper w/whom they were playing tennis, & Kyle said, "Hey we're Asian too!" It's been so great to see the boys embrace their identities more & more, & this is a moving case in point.
Second, I was talking w/Aidan about it last night, & specifically about it being the first time they've been directly targeted by such bigotry. I asked if he was feeling badly about it, then or since, & he said, "No, I just thought, 'Well, that guy's a racist!'"
Love that they can already recognize that bigotry & hate reflect on the bigots. Love that they are more & more confident in their complicated, inspiring American heritages. Hate that this is part of their US & world, but never been prouder that they're part of those communities.
PS. I'm an extremely pacifist & non-confrontational person. But sweet sassy molassy, if I ever were face to face with that kid & (especially) his parents...
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As my hometown of #Charlottesville completes a weekend of overdue statue removals w/UVa’s Clark statue this morning, wanted to make this week’s #ScholarSunday thread a bit different: pieces & voices to help contextualize this moment! #twitterstorians
Gotta preface the thread by shouting out the amazing young scholar & activist (and fellow Charlottesville High School alum) most responsible for getting us to this moment, @ZyahnaB (& all those @TakeEmDownCVL):
First, a handful of the many scholars who’ve been doing the work for years. @HilaryGreen77 has created an excellent database of statue & monument histories & removals:
Wrapping up the blog series on work in American lit with a special weekend post examining five pop culture characters who reflect the range of work in 21st century America!
From @john_sayles' Nick Rinaldi & @AoDespair's Janette Desautel to @blackishabc's Dre & @ConstanceWu's Destiny/Dorothy, these characters take us across a great deal of the late 90s, early 2000s, & up to the gig economy of the 2020s.
But I have to single out Zulema from the 2010 documentary The Harvest (La Cosecha), a heartbreaking & crucial voice & story that all Americans should watch, now more than ever.
“Every Rose Has its Thorn” is really a primer in terrible similes. “Though it’s been a while now/I can still feel so much pain/Like a knife that cuts you, the wounds heals/But the scar remains.” Dude, I think your scar is infected.
Also, I for one do not want to rule the world. Sounds exhausting.
Listen to classic rock radio long enough, and you come at last to the worst verse in history: “Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas/You know he always knows exactly what the facts is/He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice/He makes his living off the people’s taxes.”
I wanted to say a couple things about a historical figure who used to be on my Memory Day Calendar (for his June 1 birthday), why I removed him, & the difference between history & commemoration: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. #twitterstorians
For a long time, I knew Harlan only for his inspiring (mostly—hold that thought) dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), & specifically for his striking & influential argument there that the Constitution is “color-blind.”
Along with Homer Plessy & his lawyer, the thoroughly awesome Albion Tourgée, I thus put Harlan into the category of “inspiring historical figures we can learn from amidst a horrific, exclusionary, white supremacist historical event.”
As we start #PrideMonth, I wanted to quote from a paragraph from my 60s chapter in Of Thee I Sing, highlighting critical patriotic LGBTQ rights activism that predated Stonewall: "One of the earliest & most overtly critical patriotic 1960s LGBT rights protests took place outside+
Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4th, 1965. Organized by a courageous group of activists called the Gay Pioneers, this first of what would become known as the Annual Reminder Marches was very purposefully held in that historically significant location+
+on that nationally symbolic occasion; as one of its participants, Reverend Robert Wood, put it, “We were picketing for freedom and equal rights, and the Liberty Bell was a great symbol.”+
As much as the overt, neo-Confederate Lost Cause narrative and all that came with it became dominant in the post-Civil War US, I would say that another white-centered narrative was & remains just as destructive: that the Civil War was a terrible tragedy. saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/06/consid…
That tragedy frame relies on another narrative with which I grew up: recognizing the courage & sacrifice of soldiers on both sides, even if we acknowledge the war's true cause. Douglass takes that on directly in the conclusion of his stunning speech: