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19 Sep, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Between the SMH letter & this stupid article, I spent entirely too much time today reading about the longing of white men for a time when they didn't have to sit w/the discomfort of acknowledging that some lives & all of history are inherently political.
nytimes.com/2021/09/17/boo…
Wanting to "purify" art & history of the political is, in itself, a political stance: one that dismisses, excludes, & belittles the lives, experiences, & histories of women, people of color, the disabled, the LGBTQ community.
It's also an attempt at elitist gatekeeping. I'm so sick of that shit. Taking a political or moral stance does not exclude the possibility of contradiction & ambiguity. Excluding the political limits & circumscribes the possibility for contradiction & ambiguity, in art & history.
And circumscribing or limiting ANYTHING is a power move.

(Shout-out to ML#1, who, reading over my shoulder, ordered me to delete a couple of "I'm sorry, but..."s from these tweets.)
[shakes head, goes back to reading about the experiences of Black physicians practicing in the South between 1880-1920]

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More from @JABell27

Jerri Bell Profile picture
20 Sep
And let's take a look, @SMH_Historians, at a little example of how this works, right from military history. Yeoman 3rd Class Inez Beatrice McIntosh (Jackson), USNR(F), was one of the 1st 14 Black women to serve officially, & openly as Black women, in the US armed forces. 1/
She was the youngest child of formerly enslaved parents Philip and Bettie Royster McIntosh of Okolona, Mississippi. After her wartime service in Washington, DC, she married her colleague Pocahontas Jackson's younger brother DeForest. DeForest Jackson became a dentist. 2/
Here's Inez, probably in 1918. She was about 24 years old. Isn't she cute? I can't swear that the sailor making sheep's eyes at her is DeForest Jackson, but Inez was from a very nice family & I don't think she'd let just any boy hold her hand & look at her that way. 3/ Image
Read 19 tweets
Jerri Bell Profile picture
19 Sep
So many issues w/the way this is presented here. First: Learning difficulties do not equal "low intelligence." One of the smartest officers I served with was functionally illiterate. Couldn't read nursery rhymes. He had a MS in electrical engineering.
Asked how he'd managed it: he could read equations like I read text—better, maybe. He'd developed a photographic memory. He asked classmates who were doing well to tell him what had been in assigned readings in classes that weren't math/physics/engineering.
A lot of the smartest, most capable enlisted people I worked with had some small learning difference that resulted in mediocre high school grades or an inability to sit through lecture classes in college. They enlisted when they fell through the cracks. Still amazing sailors.
Read 5 tweets
Jerri Bell Profile picture
4 Sep
Good morning to everyone except Jim Golby. I'd like to say a few things about emotionally abusive relationships this morning. First, emotional abuse is abuse. Full stop. 1/
Emotional abuse happens when a predator manipulates the emotional needs & desires of the victim to compel behavior that, all other things being equal, the victim would not normally choose to engage in. 2/
That’s why consensual sex, as we typically understand it, can be a component of an emotionally abusive relationship. It makes things particularly insidious. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Jerri Bell Profile picture
31 Aug
Breaking both my Twitter fast and my silence about Afghanistan briefly this morning, now that we are officially "out" of the wars that have defined our foreign policy for two decades. And now that the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is approaching us. 1/
I had a 20-year career in military intelligence. It grieved me after 9/11 to hear the terrorist attack on the US described as an "intelligence failure," and to hear that same description applied to events at the end of our operations in Afghanistan in recent weeks. 2/
The failures did not begin in the intelligence community. Both 9/11 and the ending of our Afghanistan operations began with a failure of the vision that should guide intelligence operations, & a failure of honesty on the part of senior US government officials. 3/
Read 28 tweets
Jerri Bell Profile picture
25 Aug
@AdrianBonenber1 I wouldn't say naïve, exactly, but the piece I think you're missing is how the sausage gets made for a visit from a congressional delegation & why. Speaking here from 3 years' experience in the US Defense Attaché Office in Moscow, Russia. 1/
@AdrianBonenber1 First: when a congressional delegation (CODEL) goes to a foreign country, it is an official visit. Congressmen can go on vacation to Cancun, sure, but a CODEL is a different animal altogether. Congressmen in a foreign country represent the United States, & either the US House 2/
@AdrianBonenber1 or Senate. They aren't there as Seth & Pete, or even as Vetbros Seth & Pete. They *are* the United States, just as the US ambassador to that country is speaking to host government national as a representative of the US & is the direct voice of POTUS to the host nation. 3/
Read 20 tweets
Jerri Bell Profile picture
6 Aug
A couple of reasons my military friends here should go grab a cup of coffee, open the link, & read this story. It might not be immediately obvious, but this *is* at essence a military story—which is why I'm including it in the manuscript for the story of the Golden Fourteen. 1/
First, it's a story about two Black men, MS state senator Charles Caldwell & MS state representative Eugene Welborne, who volunteered their services in an officially-organized state militia (forerunner of National Guard) to help keep the peace in a contentious election season. 2/
Their white supremacist opponents—the White Liners and the trained & organized "Modocs" from Vicksburg—were an example of a NOT-well-regulated militia, aka they were white supremacist terrorist organizations. 3/
Read 12 tweets

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