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Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
@Ebonyteach
Jul 4, 2018 • 14 tweets • 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
I'll send my Tweets to @Penn myself, @WilliamShatner. They tenured me for this work.

This is my lane -- I have a book coming out in the spring on this very topic.

Go ahead & block me like everyone else you disagree with. I'll still be a #StarTrek fan.
We are professors of children's literature. It is a real shame when a icon of science fiction like William Shatner characterizes Black women professors as trolls, simply because we have informed opinions that he disagrees with.

I'm neither hurt nor surprised, just disappointed.
I was sincerely hoping for more progress. Star Trek taught me to be optimistic. But this -- this is the worst timeline.
Nonetheless, I will not only stand for what I believe, I will stand up for what I know. Professors & librarians are prime targets during times of social unrest. And humans are often uncomfortable when something they've believed all their lives to be true is completely wrong.
Attacks against Black faculty have grown commonplace in the 2010s. There are those who would love to see us driven from the academy altogether. theguardian.com/world/2017/aug…
Yet I am the child, grandchild & descendant of a people who have always stood up for justice, at the cost of life & limb, property & reputation. Their blood runs through my veins.

I am also a scholar, and throughout history, we have also stood up for knowledge.

And so I stand.
The comments about the Osage people in Little House on the Prairie are wrong.

The blackface minstrelsy performance in Little Town on the Prairie is wrong.
The uncritical circulation of such books to children who know nothing about United States history is not only wrong, but also harmful for their development.
We are on the right side of history. Those who believe that young children should read these books without proper historical contextualization are not.
Just as everyone today swears that their ancestors were on the sides of the angels during past moments of great moral conflict, in the future, some reading these Tweets who are mad as hell at me & others...

...will have children & grandchildren who will *swear* you were woke.
The thought provides an endless source of bitter amusement: in 50 years, the revisionist history to come.
BTW, if I'm not following you, I can't see your Tweets unless someone I follow responds to you. (Didn't see Shatner's Tweet until Mikki responded.) #bluecheckprivilege
Also, fair warning as I head out to this barbecue: I've been a fangirl for the better part of 20 years. We eat trolls for breakfast. Get ready.
Carry on with attacking a Black woman who didn't bother you on the Independence Day holiday that you purportedly love... while I enjoy my chosen family: my friends. #TwitterOff

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More from @Ebonyteach

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Oct 7, 2018
Coffee & proofreading! Copyedits for #TheDarkFantastic are due in 48 hours.

Press suggested "Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games" as a subtitle. Why not "from Harry Potter to Black Panther?"

Because I'm writing another book about the Black fantastic.
One of the things my mentors told me is that it's one thing to write a lot of books. Quite another to write a book people wanna read.

The final version of #TheDarkFantastic was approved back in March. I'm not a supergenius like some of you -- my writing & thinking takes time.
I wanted Black Panther to land, have its impact, and read its aftermath & re-evaluation. I wanted to read what my colleagues in comics studies had to say about it.

I also wanted to watch the Year of YA Black Girl Fantasy, to see how audiences & critics reacted.
Read 10 tweets
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Oct 6, 2018
This. (That's why I'm not holding my breath for the "blue wave," which is assuredly a myth. Around 50% won't give up their pedestal. Never have, never will.)
Here's a truth that's as American as apple pie: You're going to have a hard time convincing ~50% of WW to give up their promixity to the most powerful group in the nation.

The half that are already voting blue aren't economically or socially dependent upon conservative WM.
Every single gain in this country was hard won. Few of those gains were made by pleading with that 50%. In fact, they're the ones who transmit White supremacist ideology to each successive generation.

Don't believe me? Here's a quick video.
Read 6 tweets
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Oct 5, 2018
Also, for those talking about Black mythology "beyond" or "outside of" slavery & Jim Crow -- there is no beyond, or outside of. Those experiences were the crucible. Our myths and folklore were created back then, because our ancestors were fully human, and humans create culture.
Why is it so difficult for us to look at our enslaved ancestors fully in the face & see them as not only completely human, but extraordinary?

Why do we reduce their lives to mere survival? Flight? Suffering?

What about their dreams? Hopes? Stories? Imagination?
If we don't understand them and their lives better, who will?
Read 6 tweets
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Oct 5, 2018
I'm not sure if Octavia Butler was Black American or if her folks were from the Caribbean, but KINDRED is sort of Shakespeare for anyone wanting to build a Black North American fantastic world. She dealt with the problem of slavery way back in the 70s.
Plenty of challenges for building a North American Black fantastic:
1) Slavery, of course. How can you build SFF while incorporating that?
2) Also, it's not North America after all. This place is Turtle Island & belongs to 100s of Native nations -- have to take that into account.
3) What do you do about language? Naming people and places? Naming magical phenomena? Sounds cooler when it's not just plain old English.
4) What about religion? Many (not all) Black US folk are Christian & Muslim, and much of our history & folklore -- & myth -- involves faith.
Read 9 tweets
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Oct 3, 2018
This was a follow-worthy Tweet. (Lots of thoughts about this.)
Honestly, this is why I spent time in #TheDarkFantastic examining the construction of race in the Western speculative imagination, and left Afrofuturism -- which I do value as a Black American, and a Diasporan -- alone.
There's been a lot of heat for (a few) African immigrants to the US for critiquing Black Panther, but I think that it's important for us to read what continental Africans have to say about it.

(And we have to listen to their refusal to be labeled with our constructs, too.)
Read 11 tweets
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Sep 29, 2018
Thread. (Those of us who came of age in the 1990s had better language & definitions, but the culture was the same as described in the 1980s. Assault was viewed as your own fault. The Internet -- and especially the social Web -- changed everything.)
(Trigger and content warnings, pls mute) The vast majority of women who came of age before 1990 did not have adequate terminology or definitions for sexual violence. *My cohort was the first to have them, but there were violent sanctions & even social death for women who dared.*
We came of age in the 1990s.

1990s sitcoms and the culture in general gave us the language. But you risked social death if it wasn't a stranger. You risked being retraumatized. #DesireeWashington
Read 12 tweets

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