But here I am now in the midst of a revolutionary time, a time of rebellious decree against the establishment of systematic racism and whatnot. And I come across this sign. It's just very eerily reminiscent of another previous dark time in my lifetime. And for my kids to be normalized to this behavior, not behavior, but to this way of life. Is eerily familiar for some reason, just thought I'd share my thoughts with all of you today
Shahnaz Ahmed
@bookishpodcast · 3:10
As you know, we are still quite a racist country. And it's funny because I just read this book cast by Isabel Wilkerson, and she breaks it down not so much as racism, but more as a caste system, as division between who's the upper cast and who's the lower caste. That was her contention, which is really good and fine. And it's a brilliant book. So where was I going with all this? But the point is that it still exists
But to me, personally, I think that constantly seeing black lives matter places and is kind of the way that we help establish that as true because of the way that implicit biases function in our minds in order to associate blackness with humanity instead of dehumanization, which has been implemented throughout history
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:56
Hello, Shanas. Thank you for your response. And in no way, whatever. Take offense to someone seeking to understand something I'm saying a bit better. Growing up, libraries were fun. I never once felt discriminated against there. And on one hand, I get what you're saying. And that's probably its message is that we stand in solidarity with the plight of black people in America, especially here ground zero of where a lot of the anarchy took place
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 3:59
It seems like we want it to be a part of our culture. We made a lot of money off the culture. You look at the films that are constantly being number one in the box office. It definitely has a lot of violence in it, but sex. Oh, no, let's not have sex. Anyway. I'm all over the place, Izzy, and I'm sorry, but honestly, it's my initial response to all of this
I think to me it reminds me a bit of the use of the N word. And throughout history, the N word was used to put down black people and insult them. However, now that word has been reclaimed by much of the black community to symbol camaraderie. Almost right. And used by black people to do that. It's like a reclaiming of it. So I feel like possibly the signs of Black Lives Matter could be that
Average Joe
@AverageJoe · 4:41
I knew there was still racism. Don't get me wrong. I was one of other guys out there yelling at friends who thought there was anything okay about what George Zimmerman did and s*** like that, right? I mean, that was just patently insane to me that you would try to justify what happened there. And I know why you would if you were one of the people trying to
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:48
But it's still the act of it not saying it's to somebody's face, but in 150 characters or less the JPEG or video, you get to have this ability to kind of have a confessional booth like experience. You confess all your sins and you get rewarded for it with retweets and likes. It's amazing. In a way, it was only a matter of time before this sort of hate was about to come forth
I don't know any situation where a library had to market itself as a safe space. This feels like faux support. This feels very safety pin esque to me, and I keep referring back to the safety pin because that era of allyship was just really laughable. I spoke recently and I swelled recently about what white people can do for us on Black History Month and the gist of it was to keep your promise
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 3:34
And I don't know, I go through it every year. So thank you for your words, man. I appreciate it very much. And at least you got to make some sense of what I was trying to go for because I was sitting on that picture for a couple of days. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to post it or not, as the feeling had left me at that moment, but I decided to find that moment again
Chi Anonï
@Chi_Anonymous · 3:59
Yes, it may be performative, but you'll get canceled, quote, unquote. And I do find it a bit unfortunate that that's other case, but it's like a lot of Genzi feels like either you stand for something or you fall for anything. So they rather have that open representation or open sign that publicly States. Yes, Black Lives Matter to us. And a lot of people may not have felt that libraries have not been a safe place for black people
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 3:55
I'm just an artistic guy that's like an a****** sometimes and has a weird sense of humor, that's kind of my strong suit. And yet it can be triggering for me. I think in a lot of ways because of how of my experience growing up black. And in some ways, I had a negative experience growing up being black, so to speak
Average Joe
@AverageJoe · 1:35
So I see there's some new comments in the thread, and I didn't get to listen to them all yet, but I woke up and I took a look at Swell and this picture was there, and something about it didn't sit right with me since I engaged this conversation yesterday, and not just because of the conversation we were having the picture, the imagery, Black Lives Matter in libraries. It almost feels that this was back handed, that this wasn't well intended at all
We're having this whole conversation about it, which proves its ineffectiveness or effectiveness. I don't know. It's just a really, really goofy assign