Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture
Aug 22, 2018 16 tweets 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
There were layers to what happened last week, though. I've supported the person who sparked it, bought her book, and just skimmed her response post over lunch. And... when I went to her talk, she definitely emphasized her home & community culture as a factor in her success.
Beyond a particular digital celebrity's ego, I think that these conversations deserves more nuance. Goes deeper than folk "wanting it both ways" -- they are both in a sense. Folks are from one culture; they're steeped in another. That's hard.
My upbringing wasn't bicultural. With the exception of 1-2 lines, I have zero known non-Black American ancestry post-1865.

But I did grow up bi-regional, lol, if that's a thing. Southern father & grandmother, Northern mother & grandfather. Helps me imagine the immigrant dilemma.
Because honestly, I felt like an outsider to the proverbial US immigrant narrative until I read Isabel Wilkerson's THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS. That highlighted the regional differences that were marked in my family, and that made my friendships & first romance difficult.
One example: I got into it on FB last week over my reminisces about my Mississippi-born father requiring us to say "Ma'am" and "Sir" to anyone over 18 upon pain of death, lol. It was weird asf in 1980s Detroit to say it, even offensive to Northern Black folk. But Dad was like...
If regional differences are weird like that, I can only imagine how much more fraught it must be to grow up with one culture at home, and another at school & in your neighborhood. I'm sympathetic. And US folk *in general* (not just Black people) can be xenophobic.

But. *But.*
Black American DOS have been in a centuries-long fight for personhood in one of a few Diasporic contexts (don't @ me; said "few," not only) where we're a distinct, embattled minority.

That's different. That's unique. And yes, having our particular culture *at home* is a thing.
History matters. So does timing. Pre-1965, comments about Black folks "not having a culture" or "not having values" would've seemed ridiculous.

Since 1965, the full brunt of White supremacist backlash has sought to punish us for the midcentury miracle of human rights.
It's one thing to read about it in class, or watch a documentary. It's quite another to have family narratives that stretch back to the mid-to-late 1800s about the extreme, unwarranted, unrelenting, dehumanizing violence in a nation purporting to be the global arbiter of freedom.
It's one thing to observe the effects of being less than 15% of a country for 4-5 generations (our % was higher during the slavery period) in the lives of your friends, teachers, and classmates.

It's quite another to carry that specific trauma in your DNA & consciousness.
These conversations are not new. Hashed it out in undergrad & grad school with friends whose families were from other places. Some disagreed with me -- and listen, I hear y'all. "Effie, we all got pain." Gotcha. But Black American DOS pain is specific to a context we're still in.
Beyond any and all xenophobia, which ain't cool, some of the Black American DOS response is sheer exhaustion. We tired & there are fewer places for renewal & restoration -- there is no Promised Land for us, because this sure ain't it.
For us, the United States of America is the scene of the crime. The world wants us to forget, and criticizes us for not just shaking off our bleeding wounds. "Walk it off!"

When folk who look like us come along & tell us to "walk it off?" Maaaan. Salt in those wounds. For real.
In #TheDarkFantastic, and in a couple forthcoming pieces, I write about the necessity of imaginative & narrative escape for Black people -- I am indebted to Schomburg Center director Kevin Young's *The Grey Album* for sparking that intellectual journey in my own work.
The problem of escape is profound for Black American DOS. Beyond all talk about pain & survival, we've had to evolve into escape artists. 😂 In fact, we can escape in plain sight.

Our culture was -- and is -- the only escape that we have. There is no other refuge for us.
Just a few thoughts. But most of all, I think it's important for us to respect & love each other, no matter our background. Peace! #TwitterOff

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Ebonyteach

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
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
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
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
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
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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(