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I see a lot of conversations about Juneteenth, but very few that center African-Americans from Texas nor centering the holiday in the specific cruelty of Texas racism. The same thing is happening w/conversations about Black Wall Street in Tulsa.
Specificity matters.
Specificity matters.
It& #39;s particularly important given how flat Black histories in Texas and Oklahoma are treated. I say this with kindness, but if you are not from there or are ancestrally from there & have consistently been invested, your voice on these chapters does not interest me as much.
It& #39;s important that ppl across the Diaspora connect w/each other& #39;s histories, but I will never not say it: specific chapters of history do not belong to all of us, and that is not anti-Diaspora to say that. I believe in your autonomy & stewardship of your history too.
Editors commissioning about Juneteenth & Tulsa: find qualified Black writers, and specifically African-American writers, to tell those stories. AAs in those states have literally held vigil for 100 and 160 + years against a lot of odds. Honor them by centering their descendants.
But Juneteenth is a uniquely Black Texas story that is so specific in its cruelty, resilience and audacity. You need people from Texas, who have been steeped in oral histories about holding vigil for a chapter of history America tried to erase, to do that justice. Period.
And trust me: I return this energy in kind. I do not want the voices not from Chicago, not of Chicago, writing about Cabrini Green and drowning out the distinct tenor of voices that have been reared, loved, despised, built & broken & run out and returned to, a place.
That said, I would like to see someone brave enough to confront how the American Diaspora& #39;s embrace of Tulsa and Juneteenth speaks volume about the classism & derision that many Deep Southerners feel, not wrongly, that the North has for her stories & tendency to fetishize them.
It would be a grave, grave mistake to think simply b/c you& #39;re Black and writing that you are above or exempt from the temptation to fetishize "little known" parts of the human experience.
Black death by the state has become a sort of Only Fans for publications for a reason.
Black death by the state has become a sort of Only Fans for publications for a reason.
https://twitter.com/chaedria/status/1271232694526062592?s=20">https://twitter.com/chaedria/...
To be clear: I& #39;m not saying that non-AAs from Texas or Oklahoma, or people w/no lived experience in those states do not have a story to tell. What I am saying is that I do not think their voices should be centered above those that are the living embodiment of that survival.
I would actually love to read how perhaps a Kenyan or Ghanian-American was forced to reckon with the specificity of this chapter being from it, but not of it. What limits and connections did it confirm or reveal to you?
That& #39;s still Texas/Oklahoma specific.
That& #39;s still Texas/Oklahoma specific.
