Today is Juneteenth. Michelle Garcia, Editorial Director of NBCBLK, curated Flipboard's Good Life newsletter this week. She chose a range of stories about the past and present of Juneteenth, including a look at the "Harriet Tubman of Texas," the commercialization of the holiday, and the work that still remains. "Now that it's a federal holiday, part of figuring out how to mark the day as a nation comes with educating the public about it," writes Garcia. Here's her Storyboard.
Willie Mays died yesterday at 93. Our sports editor has curated this Storyboard of tributes to an American icon. "His extraordinary statistical accomplishments speak for themselves, but the grace, joy, energy and intellect with which he played the game allowed him to separate himself from other great players of his, or any, era," writes Lincoln Mitchell for @TheConversationUS.
@blackmastodon I've got into plenty of discussions about race on the Fediverse or where race has been a major factor, even subconsciously. Take last night for example, I got into a discussion where it was just white people saying white people shit from a white person's perspective. Most of the time I'll end up flabbergasted, disappointed and frustrated.
People being ignorant isn't exclusive to the Fediverse. Expecting to find an open utopia within the Fediverse where everyone agrees with you is both unrealistic and unhealthy. I understand that people are searching for a sense of community. Communities are amazing after all, but there was very much a reason that the BPT Country Club was created over on Reddit when there was already the Black People Twitter subreddit.
If your calling is to engage in intelligent discourse on the Internet, that's already exhausting with people not reading more than a headline, nitpicking minute details or simply feeling so entitled they respond without actually knowing anything. And especially if your brand/calling is to engage in race based discourse, then you're going to be even more exhausted because it's exhausting AF teaching people and that goes doubly where racial politics are involved. Pay rises for all teachers BTW.
I think people should stop saying Fediverse and meaning Mastodon. There's tools to recreate walled spaces for hive minds within the Fediverse like the BPT Country Club for example there's Lemmy, Kbin, Mbin, PieFed, SubLinks and soon PixelFed Groups.
There's a reason the meme exists where you'll say something akin to vegetarian pizza is your favourite and you'll get someone in your comments saying that pepperoni pizza is cultural and you should stop trying to destroy traditions.
I'm not saying that there aren't racists on the Fediverse, there's plenty. I'm not saying that people aren't experiencing unprovoked racism. So please don't confuse this with that. Racism is never okay, overtly nor covertly. But I'm simply referring to a type of discourse that is engaged in and the expectations around it.
I guess what I'm saying is don't build a raft and expect to cross the ocean without getting your feet wet. Especially when there's boats and even planes available. #BlackMastodon
Frederick Douglass visited Ireland in the decades before the American Civil War, where he met Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's nationalist leader and a vocal critic of slavery. “I am the friend of liberty in every clime, class and colour. My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island. No — it extends itself to every corner of the earth," O'Connell said at a meeting of his Repeal Association that Douglass attended in September 1845. Here's a look at how his words influenced Douglass's activism: "Agitate, agitate, agitate."
@EllenInEdmonton@blackvoices@blackmastodon Even to this day, while maybe no longer using relaxer, she uses expensive hair extensions and other types of hair pieces that give her the appearance of a “natural” look that’s financially out of reach for most Black women. Still, I do appreciate her frankly decrying her nightmarish experiences using relaxers. I remember back before she was “Oprah”, she wore a short Afro on local Baltimore TV news where I used to see her in the early 1980’s.
@Weirding_Is_Real@blackvoices@blackmastodon You’re welcome! NYT does a pretty good job with its audio versions of its longer articles— a godsend for my elderly mother, whose eyesight makes it harder to read the tiny print of longer pieces.
Romance Writers of America (RWA) is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in part because of years of controversy surrounding race and inclusion. The trade association was founded by a Black woman in 1980 but became progressively whiter and less supportive of Black writers, awarded controversial books and in 2005, polled members on if romance should be defined as between one man and one woman. Despite all this, romance itself is thriving — it's the highest-earning fiction genre and sales are climbing. NBC took a look at what went wrong at the RWA. We want to know: What genres of book do you read (choose as many options as you like)? And if you're a writer, tell us about your work in the comments!
@CultureDesk@bookstodon@blackmastodon
The poll results are a bit surprising to me. I always knew sci-fi was popular, but I wouldn't have predicted it to be first. My debut novel was #sci_fi (or, more specifically, #PoliSciFi) but I mostly read non-fiction.