#what i am talking about is the phenomenon of the GENERAL PUBLIC having apparently suffered massive amnesia

[words-writ-in-starlight]

writing tip

Time for more vagueblogging about that dude who wanted to hire me.

Listen.  If you are working in a universe where some Major Societal Change occurred, please consider how long it takes for a society to change completely.  

Basically?  George Lucas was wrong.  I’m sure that’s hard to hear but it’s true.  The Jedi do not go from Space Cops to a dimly remembered myth of a religion in twenty years, no matter how good your propaganda is, because of a thing called living memory.  Here are your approximate time frames you’re going to be working with if you’re dealing with this kind of setting:

Here And Now, the time where your novel is set

Living Memory, the things that are remembered by the people who are still alive, probably everything from the present back through most of a century, although that one’s a moving target based on lifespan and circumstances like war or famine

Mythic History, the things that are talked about in the tone of “once upon a time”

You are also dealing with:

Before The Event

After The Event

You can use propaganda to make people “forget” things in terms of being unwilling to speak about them, but no propaganda program is perfect and societies have a lot of momentum behind them.  Living Memory is still crucially important to take into account, and things that are present in Living Memory shouldn’t be relegated to Mythic History because it feels discordant as hell.  This means that, if everything Before The Event, whatever that major change was, is Mythic History, everyone who was alive at the time of The Event should be dead now.

Ex: Vader isn’t a fucking sorcerer, y’all, he’s using the Force and there’s literally no justifiable reason for anyone even nominally well-acquainted with galactic events to think otherwise.  There were a lot of Jedi and they were commanders in a big ass war about two decades ago, nothing in Star Wars bothers me more than this.  There was a while there where you couldn’t swing a space cat without hitting someone who was within two degrees of separation from a Jedi, it’s ridiculous to think that everyone wrote them off as myth that fast.

(Listen, I know the real world is in a rush to forget important things like the Holocaust, but A: societies have momentum and a lot of ours is antisemetic in nature, among other things, B: that kind of denial is bullshit and we all know it’s bullshit, C: the Axis lost WWII so that’s not the kind of societal overhaul we’re talking about here, and D: sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction, we’re trying to write a believable novel not a history textbook.  No one would believe you if you wrote a novel where over 16 million men shared an identical Y chromosome passed down from a conqueror eight centuries ago, nor if your main character conquered an island by making it a peninsula, but here we are.)

Anyway, here’s the point: if you want to completely rewrite a society to the extent that the way things were Before The Event is completely foreign to the civilization at large, you are not going to have a main character who was twenty years old when the civilization changed over.  You’re just not.  You need hundreds of years of consistent and competent erasure to instill that kind of total disbelief that, for example, no one ever believed the world was flat.  Or that the Jedi existed.  We are not talking about one lifetime.  We are talking about at least everyone who was alive during The Event being dead and, ideally, another generation having kicked it, too--say 25 years to a generation, so, like, minimum 125 years.  You have to remove Living Memory from the equation if you want to talk about things Before The Event as Mythic History.  The more time has passed After The Event, the more justifiable forgetting the way things were Before The Event becomes.  

If you simply can’t have that kind of time frame, for whatever reason, then you need to go full V for Vendetta and the authority figures need to be ready and willing to kill anyone who even hints at the way things were Before The Event.  Not just anyone who stands up against them, anyone who even indicates that they have not followed orders and completely forgotten how things used to be.  Living Memory must be eradicated artificially in this situation, both through propaganda and through literally killing the memory--and I’ll point out that it’s ultimately unsuccessful, because Living Memory is pretty pernicious.

But, uh, all that being said...

Hot take?

If you’re trying to, oh, say, establish a society where women have completely subjugated men to second-class citizen status, you’re gonna need more than twenty years.

[luidilovins]

You should turn your post on the Uncanny Valley into a book or something. I am not even kidding, it's brilliant and sorely needed information. Thank you for it.

Tbh its just speculative that the uncanny valley is an inherent biological trait and not cultural or a learned behavior at the moment. A good example would be the cultural phenomenon of colorophobia where in the US we have a longer history of using clowns in our horror pop culture genres than countries like Japan.

Clown entertainment has been around since the Egytian times and maybe some people have always been freaked out by them it honestly just takes one director or author to have an disproportionately irrational fear and good cinematography skills to convince people that they SHOULD hate clowns just as much, (I could say the same about the movie Jaws but thats a bit of a tangent,) or a memorable event that damages the public's trust in something that SHOULD be innocent or harmless. (A good examples being the John Wayne Gacy trials.)

Clowns are also thought to be in the uncanney valley so ita a fairly good argument on cultural phenomenon versus genetic traits. Up until aroud the 60s-70s clowns were actually fairly well liked by the US general public and a lot of older generation still find a fondness in it that would scare the living shit out of their grandchildren.

As far as evidence that I may be right about the "uncanney valley might be because of rabies" theory, there has been a small case study suggesting that the movements of a non-human robot that trigger the effect in us, is also present in people with parkinsons but the sample size is too small for me to be thoroughly convinced.

And don't be mistaken I also dislike this concept because saying that ableism is an inherent human trait is just as bad as saying racism is an inherent human trait. There is little to gain from distrust in the disabled and little historical evidence to suggest it was common or beneficial to discard disabled people. Disabled people's remains have been found time and time again to live to incredibly long livea and be cared for, and participate in their communities. I'm highly critical of this particular case study and I take it with a grain of salt because its on cosmo, but evidence of human disabilities and compassion can be sourced by actual bones and it's been placed on VERY credible sources. NPR, NBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, NY Times, literally the clostest you can get to creme of the crop news articles on DOZENS of accounts and if you have a goddam problem then pay for a tour to the Smithsonian, find an archeologist and coherse them into showing you the bones and then explain phorensics to you because you probably wouldn't understand unless you too were a phorensic archeologist yourself.

What I DO BELIEVE tho is that if the uncanny valley is a legitimate inherent trait, that like most evolutionary traits, it made it this far for this long because it somehow served us benificially. And the biggest benifit I can think of is identifying neuro-infectious diseases because they can spread agressivley, many of them lead to death or lasting effects and are fucking MISERABLE to catch. We're talking brain swelling, fevers, uncontrollable vomiting, tremors, hallucinations, motor and vocal tics, difficulty swallowing, seizures. This could all happen because they eat infected deer meat or because of one bad fox bite. It's miserable if you survive and horrifying if you dont. Rabies can survive in your muscle tissue for years before infecting your brain and once it does usually you only live for about 5-10 days in and out of concious knowledge that you're going to die painfully, and disease aggrivated psychosis. It would be hard to pinpoint the causation because the amout of time before full blown infection would vary too much to assosiate for a long time. So your only option is to hone in on telltale signs.

The disabled people who would suffer from herdeditary or developmental neurological disorders run the risk of prejudice from mistaken identity, but if a human is part of a community, and doesn't die within a week from having a wobbly head, it would sooner or later become apparent that they're not dangerous. I think nowadays culturally people don't press to learn more about disabled people due to social and political prejudice and never fucking grow up past that. Mistaken identity or not. You learn about people from the patterns of their behaviors so even ones that seem abnormal to you become a normal recognizable pattern for them. Fancy that.

We don't get grossed out by chimps or gorillas, who are even more distant cousins, and the proof that we don't have a search and destroy button for anything immediatly related to us is a bunch of bullshit can be found in almost every human's blood on earth. And not just neanderthals, but denisovans as well. And that's not even accounting for genetic backtracking the crossbreeding of other sapiens species before we were whittled down to just the three. What makes the tweet even stupider is that when neandertals still roamed the earth humans were shorter, hardier, and overall more rough looking so we looked even indistinguished then. We Also Chewed On Bones and neandertals handled cold climates better than us based on a study on chest cavity density and, skull nasal intake and heat circulation, providing genetic diversity and the upper hand in survival in the tundras or mountainous regions spanning over Eurasia. If it wasn't for humans fucking neandertals we might not have been able to spread over the contient or diversify the way we did.

So my full hypothesis is that if the uncanny valley is a genetic inherent human trait it was used to benifit people from catching agressive diseases in a time where the benifit of fearing a group member with rabies outweighed the cost of fearing a group member with a disability like parkinsons.

WHAT PISSED ME OFF was the idea that we are DESIGNED to be unwary of our evolutionary cousins could easily be used for white supremacist spaces to justify racism BECAUSE IT ALREADY HAS

So that one tweet that might seem like a quirky thinkpiece in my eyes is just fuel for eugenics trend round whatever number we're on. It's like we don't fucking learn. It would be REALLY easy to retool the concept that it's natural for people to be fearful of whatever the bullshit definition of sub-humans are. Claiming that black people were sub-human thus deserving of mistrust and submission to white ownership worked like a fucking charm.

Maybe if I go to college and major in psyche/socio/civics it'll be my college thesis. Right now I'm more of a hobbyist than anything, but what I DO know is that anyone can make an untested hypothesis to combat another untested hypothesis and it should hold just as much goddamn value. I combatted the idea that the idea that human othering was funneled into an unconfirmed effect that causes disgust and terror based on non-human sapiens is in fact racist and gave what is in my opinion a more evoluntionary practical approach to the uncanney valley.

The generalized links that I used APARENTLY weren't good enough for some people but aparently a single tweet that says "hur dur heedle dee uncanney valley exists because of human cousins" was taken at face value even tho it was probably tapped out in five seconds without regards to the reproccussions. I find a huge discomfort that less than studious links about the evolution of monkey social behaviors that I used as a guideline to explaining my concerns became the focal point for people to nitpick without even having the gall to "well actually" on the subject. That absolute ravaging NEED to rip apart at it and devolve into name calling because I MENTIONED racism is fucking suspicious and I don't trust it. I had to stop looking at the responses because some people were only reblogging and arguing with barely half of my argument and i was getting nowhere fast.

There were a few people that made actual points with cited sources that made their own rebuttle arguments. That I respect. It's just as valid an argument as mine and I'm ALWAYS willing to take on more credible sources to strengthen my stance or gain perspective.

But it's the utter dismissal of a concerning concept that just seeped into the subtext that gnawed at my gut. Some people on top of hating the linked sources I provided, admitted they didn't read it, refused to read between the lines to purposfully misinterpret or derail my main points, and detract that my claim that the tweet was a result of systemic white supremacy saturated into modern science was a bunch of bullshit because I claimed that 1500s anglos invented racism.

The thing is we did invent the racism that we fucking currently subscribe to.

We practice the science that we formulated based on our own social prejudice. Real people die from this.

We remain uncritical of our own theorums that we postulate then pat ourselves on the back like we're philosophical geniuses even though racism is a family heirloom with a new paint job.

We preach the eugenics ideals that we pulled out of our asses to benifit from fearmongering, promises of national security and unpaied labor.

White supremacists create subtext with the intention of it being consumed by accident or in ways that seem palatable.

Fuck.

That.

I don't hate the person who wrote the tweet. Chances are that they gave the tweet as much thought as they took the time to write it and went on their day as a fun little thinkpiece. Everyone on the internet does it. But its that kind of thinking error that needs to be adressed as a progression of historic and scientific prejudice that gets rehashed, recycled and untouched and continually damages and is weaponized against marginalized people. I am not wrong for taking it seriously especially when a bunch of people were sitting around nodding their heads just as effortlessly.

I don't owe the internet any more sources than the tweet. I don't owe anyone on the internet a full scientific ananysis. And the people's reaction to what I had to say was actually what further convinced me I might have hit the nail on the head.

[rajpersaud]

Associate Professor at Suicide Research Unit discusses Meghan Markle Interview

You can also listen to this interview on a free app on iTunes and Google Play Store entitled 'Raj Persaud in conversation', which includes a lot of free information on the latest research findings in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and mental health, plus interviews with top experts from around the world. Download it free from these links. Don't forget to check out the bonus content button on the app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rajpersaud.android.rajpersaud

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr-raj-persaud-in-conversation/id927466223?

  Thomas Niederkrotenthaler is associate professor at the Suicide Research Unit at the Institute of Social Medicine, Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna. He is the co-chair of the International Association for Suicide Prevention's Media and Suicide Special Interest Group.

Reacting to suicidal revelations - is Piers Morgan right?

Research on suicide reporting suggests a surprising effect of Meghan's interview

by Dr Raj Persaud

  Piers Morgan, a controversial TV host, has now left his national broadcasting position after expressing strong disbelief over Meghan’s confessions of suicidal thinking in her interview with Oprah Winfrey.

BBC News reports that Piers Morgan continues to stand by his criticism of the Duchess of Sussex. Ofcom, a regulator of broadcasting in the UK, is investigating his comments after receiving 41,000 complaints from the British public.

The duchess apparently formally complained to ITV about Morgan's remarks. It is reported that she raised concerns about how Piers Morgan's sentiments affect the issue of mental health, and what it might do to others contemplating suicide.

Is Meghan correct in her reported analysis? Or is Piers Morgan right to stand by his comments?

Or, in discussing suicide during an Oprah Winfrey interview, did she in fact make it more likely that others will self-harm?

Media reporting of suicidal behaviour has been found to contribute to an increase in suicidal thinking and actual suicides in the population. At this point Piers Morgan may argue the duchess is wrong to criticise him, and has only herself to blame, if there is a spike in suicides following the interview.

Recent research found that Google searches for “How to kill yourself” significantly increased after the release of ‘13 Reasons Why’, a popular Netflix American teen drama on the aftermath of high school student's suicide. The study calculated there were 900 000 to 1.5 million more searches than expected, for that time of year, in just over two weeks following the release of the series.

Another study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in February 2020, estimated there were 195 additional suicide deaths among 10- to 17-year-old youths between April 1 and December 31, 2017, following the series’ release.

One of the first studies to investigate this effect, analysed 34 newspaper stories that reported on suicides, and found a 2.51% increase in suicide during the month of the publicity.

More worrying still, about the possible repercussions of the extensive reporting of Meghan’s suicidal thinking worldwide, is that, research by Professor Steven Stack, an expert on the sociology of suicide, based at Wayne State University, USA, found that studies measuring the presence of an entertainment celebrity in a suicide press report, are over 5 times more likely to find a copycat effect, while studies focusing on female suicide, were almost 5 times more likely to report a copycat effect, than other research investigating the impact of suicide reporting in the press.

Another example reported by Steven Stack is that in the year of the publication of a book which focused on self-harm via a particular method, suicide by that specific recommended method, increased 313% in New York City. In almost one third of cases a copy of the book was found at the scene of the suicide.

On average, following the media reporting of a suicide, approximately one third of persons involved in subsequent suicidal behavior appear to have seen the reporting of that suicide and may be copycat suicides.

The suicide of actress Marilyn Monroe was associated with a 12% increase in suicide.

One theory as to why reporting of a celebrity killing themselves or feeling suicidal, according to Professor Steven Stack, is that the vulnerable suicidal person may reason, ‘If a Marilyn Monroe with all her fame and fortune cannot endure life, why should I?’

Copycat suicides following media reporting of self-harm has been termed the ‘Werther Effect’, following a notorious historical incident after the publication in 1774 of a popular novel in which the hero kills himself. Entitled, The Sorrows of Young Werther the book by Goethe was rumoured to be responsible for a subsequent epidemic of suicide in young people. European authorities were so worried about its impact, that the book was banned in Copenhagen, Italy and Leipzig.

Goethe is reported to have commented on the phenomenon; “My friends … thought that they must transform poetry into reality, imitate a novel like this in real life and, in any case, shoot themselves; and what occurred at first among a few took place later among the general public …”

However, now new research suggests that, in fact, Meghan Markle in talking about suicide, may have indeed performed a positive service in terms of suicide prevention.

The study entitled, ‘Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects’, refers to a ‘Papageno Effect’, which the authors claim may be the opposite of the ‘Werther Effect’, and happens when suicide rates go down following a particular kind of self-harm publicity.

The ‘Papageno Effect’, the authors explain, is based on Papageno's overcoming of a suicidal crisis in Mozart's opera ‘The Magic Flute’. If media reporting has a suicide-protective impact this should now be referred to as the ‘Papageno Effect’ the authors argue. In Mozart's opera, Papageno becomes suicidal upon fearing the loss of his beloved Papagena; however, he refrains from suicide because of three boys who draw his attention to alternative coping strategies.

Thomas Niederkrotenthaler and Gernot Sonneck from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, led a team who analysed all 497 suicide-related print media reports from the 11 largest Austrian nationwide newspapers, including the term suicide, between 1 January and 30 June 2005.

Reporting of individuals thinking about suicide (not accompanied by attempted or completed suicide) was associated with a decrease in national suicide rates. This study suggests that media items on suicidal thinking, perhaps as described by Meghan in her recent interview, formed a distinctive class of articles, which have a low probability of being potentially harmful.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that in marked contrast, media stories attempting to dispel popular public myths about suicide, in other words articles that you would have thought would be helpful, and were intended to be helpful as regards suicide, were associated with increases in suicide rates.

Other articles associated with increases in suicide rates include stories where the main focus was on suicide research, items containing contact information for a public support service and also the reporting of expert opinions.

In other words, all the previous so-called expert opinion of how the media ought to report suicide was not actually linked to drops in suicide rates, but instead increases.

The authors conclude that the actual reporting of suicidal thinking may contribute to preventing suicide. Therefore, it follows that whatever Piers Morgan may think or believe about the Meghan interview, the latest scientific research suggests she may have performed a public service in drawing attention to suicidal thinking.

One theory as to why this might be the case include the suggestion that reporting someone thinking about suicide enhances identification with the reported individual, and thus highlights the reported outcome as ‘going on living’.

This research suggests a new public health strategy as regards suicide prevention. This may be most effective when articles are published on individuals who refrained from adopting suicidal plans, and instead adopted positive coping mechanisms, despite suffering adverse circumstances.

The authors refer to this kind of press story as ‘Mastery of Crisis’. One example they quote: ‘Before [Tom Jones] had his first hit, he thought about suicide… and wanted to jump in front of an Underground train in London… In 1965, before he made the charts with “It's not unusual”, he thought for a second: “If I just take a step to the right, then it'll all be over”.’

Whatever else you may think of her, or the interview, the key question becomes, did Meghan exhibit ‘Mastery Of Crisis’?

REFERENCES

Piers Morgan stands by Meghan criticism after Good Morning Britain exit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56343768  

Internet Searches for Suicide Following the Release of 13 Reasons Why. Ayers JW, Althouse BM, Leas EC, Dredze M, Allem J. JAMA Intern Med. 2017;177(10):1527–1529. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.3333  

Association between the release of Netflix's 13 Reasons Why and suicide rates in the United States: an interrupted times series analysis. Bridge, J, Greenhouse, JB, Ruch, D, Stevens, J, Ackerman, J, Sheftall, A, et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2019; 28 Apr (doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2019.04.020).  

Suicide in the Media: A Quantitative Review of Studies Based on Nonfictional Stories. Steven Stack. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 35(2) April 2005, 121-133  

Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, Martin Voracek, Arno Herberth, Benedikt Till, Markus Strauss, Elmar Etzersdorfer, Brigitte Eisenwort and Gernot Sonneck. British Journal of Psychiatry, 197(3), 234-243. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.109.074633  

  Check out this episode!

[outlyingthoughts]

My mom was right, or a story on my privileges and microaggressions: Jul 20

Sometimes, your thoughts appear to meet at a cosmic intersection, everything coinciding and suddenly unlocking another level of understanding about your reality.

The start of Summer 2020 was a cosmic intersection for my reality. From populations around the world finally leading global protests against racism and police brutality, the escalation of Police-state-like situations in France and reading more books like « So you want to talk about race » by Ijeoma Oluo; everything confirmed an uncanny feeling I grew up to have an increased acuity for: my Mom was right, the world around me, despite how privileged I had seemed to be so far, was viciously racist and being blind to the racism I suffered from didn’t make it unreal.

Growing up in France with the myth of colorblindness, « because we are all one, indivisible and equal » in the eyes of the Republic and the Laïcité, makes it easy to deny the existence of institutionalized racism. French secularism, as the central pillar of our civic culture, provides a logic for our republic to conceal its racism under the soft blanket of a republican model of integration.

The French government officially rejects both censuses and data collection based on ethnic, religious or linguistic nature of groups. As such our national social cohesion is solely relying on the idealistic dream that from the moment that we have a French nationality, it grants us all an absolute equality in treatment, legally ensured by our all-mighty constitution.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved this principle that the state should be outlawed from seeing race and obliged by the law to treat us all equally. I loved attending my civic education classes and having a program that preached that we were all included because what mattered was that we were all French before anything else. I loved feeling like it was true thanks to my already existing privileges. I’ve had the luxury to believe in this illusion, all of it, until I had to navigate the « adult world » on my own, face racism with my own eyes and discovered how facts were radically different from our nicely designed civic education program.

My privileges allowed me to swim in sweet denial of the social reality of our country. But what happens if you're not French? What happens if you’re not perceived as French by the rising extreme right wing and populist political parties, by the people in the street, by a large portion of the voters in local and national elections ? What happens when the social reality doesn’t match those beautiful principles of equality and both the public discourse and authorities turn blind to systemic injustice ?

The problem is that not every French kid of color has the luxury to feel included and valued within the French society. When adults outside of your house are biased towards people that look like you, whether it be in the street, in fancy shops or even teachers at school; when politicians and people in the news are framing people from your ethnic or religious group or even from the neighborhood you come from as dangers, criminals or frauds of the system; how can you feel French before all, equal and included ?

Unfortunately, when sociologists and researchers are interested in studying this phenomenon, it is virtually impossible for them to do so since such data and measures are deemed inherently illegal in the government’s eyes. Even minorities asking for acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and inequalities through ethnic and/or religious demographic statistics are thus called out for being separatist and/or communitarist, all of this based on the adoption of the Law on « Informatique et liberté » in January 1978 which prevented public authorities from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria.

Since then, even laws aiming at allowing the study of diversity, social integration and discrimination have been deemed anti-constitutional. As such, there is no way in France to account for socio-economic inequalities of ethnic and religious minorities, which -of course- makes it easier to deny their existence since they legally cannot be accounted for and studied.

This lack of acknowledgment does translate into French society and the way many French people think -regardless of their skin color and religion, even though more regularly among people of caucasian appearance-. Since I started growing more and more aware of the insidious racism around me and calling it out, I received backlash on many topics like cultural appropriation or reversed racism and a lot of denying of racial issues in our country.

In France, like in many Western countries with large non-white populations, many people refer to the existence of a so-called « reversed racism » when minorities start to call out systemic racism in our societies. So much that even some of my own relatives have thrown this term in my face when I started arguing against them on institutional racism in our country.

Sadly, in France the inability to account for discrimination, inequalities and even violence against minorities makes it virtually impossible to prove with numbers how rare what they refer to as « reversed racism » is compared to the urgency to address the too common racism against people of colors.

In the context of social justice, the goal is to highlight the institutional character of racism in our societies. Reversed racism in this context does not exist because white people in Western societies do not suffer from systemic inequalities and discrimination. Because last time I checked, Caucasians looking people in France do not risk institutionalized racial profiling and violence by the police or discrimination in employment because of « reversed racism ».

To have family members, who can witness how racism plays out in my everyday life and still believe in reversed racism comes to me as a denial of the experience of people of color when facing racism. It is like turning the cheek to the other side and say « yes you may suffer because of racism but please let’s not focus on your pain because I found a concept that fits me and all my unchecked privileges and allows me to deny the experience of a whole part of the population justifying it with a form of racism that does not impact my everyday life and doesn’t exist on a systemic scale »: News flash this is extremely insulting.

These forms of insidious white privileges in people’s discourse; to be able to be blind to racism and deny its existence because it does not affect your everyday life are microaggressions to people of color, denials of our pain and prevent a fruitful debate on how to solve the issue of institutionalized racism in our societies.

On my own privileges

My mom was right, in the tender years of my childhood I was privileged enough to virtually not see a difference between me and the other white kids (apart from the hairstyles I couldn’t do or that I was tanner than them regardless of the seasons).

My paternal grandfather was white and mayor of his town, I loved going to his workplace as much as I could, always showered in compliments and candies. Sometimes I would look up at the portrait of the current president hung in a big ceremonial room in the townhall and despite knowing that my parents didn’t approve of him, still I felt so at home within the bounds of our republic.

And while such privileges didn’t lead me to be « colorblind », it did make me blind to a large part of the discrimination I suffered from when I finally old enough to face it myself. I was convinced to be living in a post-racist society, convinced that only a minority of uneducated countryside freaks who had never seen a black person could be racist. I was convinced of all of this because I lived in a country with such beautiful laws and principles on equality and republican inclusion that it seemed unimaginable that the contrary could be real.

When my black mother was trying to make me notice micro-aggressions and subtly racist situations from our everyday life, I was denying everything (“it’s not racism mom, it’s -enter whatever excuse I could make up for them-). Sometimes I’d even make fun of her for being so imaginative and overly sensitive. Worse, I would go crazy with my democratic propaganda when she’d tell me she couldn’t be bothered to go vote because she did not feel included or represented in the elections. While I still condemn not voting because (forgetting the debate on whether it is rational or not) it is both a right and a privilege that isn’t respected by the autocratic leader in my maternal country, now I also understand my mom’s stand, feeling ignored and not included in political debates. 

Today, I’m calling myself out for blindly believing in this integrative republican lie despite my own mother’s truth. When first generation but also second, third or even fourth generation immigrants are massively deemed as frauds of the system, it is logical that they have a reluctance to waste their time and resources on getting informed and involved in a system that pisses on them while still exploiting with joy their labor for the benefits of the national economy.

On Microaggressions

After reading a couple books and many essays on race like « So you want to talk about race », I felt discouraged as the wanna-be essayist I am. I didn't want to become yet another mixed essayist since we all apparently had the same stories on the way our bodies had been shamed, fetishized and sexualized whether it is our big butts, big hair, the same stories on exceptionalism and belittling compliments we receive, either making us exceptions of the group we identify as (« you’re pretty for a black girl ») or even categorizing our successes solely as a result of affirmative action (when I was applying to one of the top universities in Political Science in France, a friend of mine who was also a person of color told me that I was sure to get in because I was a great and lucky token black person).

Such discourses are so normalized and internalized that as I entered adulthood, I found myself sharing with my Caucasian father my deep fears of making it in life only because I was very often the only black or person of color in the circles and institutions I evolved within. Luckily, after a year of attending university abroad, I recovered confidence in my intelligence and abilities; but still had this fear when writing about my experience to not want to be seen as yet another angry black woman. But now the cosmic intersection struck me like a truck in my face: we all have the same story, not because we are whiny individuals and all the same but because everywhere people of color are suffering from the same discrimination and/or micro-aggressions.

What I had interpreted as my non-originality which would make me unable to succeed as a writer is just yet another proof of the systemic nature of racism and the discriminating ways of thinking and standards in our societies which we all suffer from.

Somehow, I found myself wishing at times that I had been an outcast like Ijeoma, but sadly I was socialized to match and please people’s expectations. When puberty and reality hit, I found a way to fold away myself and straighten the black out of me to fit the mold: whether it be in school, in my mostly white friend circles, in my behavior or appearance.

For the longest time from the start of my teenage years, I began internalizing all the ways societies and people told me that my “blackness” was ugly. How my hair was too big or deemed disgusting, how my fellow classmates saw me as a milking cow for starting puberty earlier than most girls. It came to a point where I genuinely believed that I could never be seen as beautiful if I let my natural bouncy curls and curvy shapes out. I was in denial of how much daily microaggressions had destroyed my self-esteem and standards of beauty.

Micro-aggressions are actions or remarks that are received as subtle or non-intentional forms of discrimination against minorities and/or marginalized group. An example of micro-aggression is someone telling you that you’ve never been arrested by the police because “you’re not that black for a black person” or that your hair is “impractical” and annoying because African hair requires more time and care to be maintained.

The problem with such remarks isn’t necessarily the intent or the way the person who made it thinks about the micro-aggression but rather the way it is received and hurts the receiver. Often times, when we do dare to stand up for ourselves against a micro-aggression, we are being told the same things I use to tell my own mother: that we are too sensitive or easily offended (especially if you’re from my generation I’m convinced you know the pleasure to hear older generations complain that we’re “a generation of offended sheep”) and only now I can understand how disrespectful and unsensitive my privileges made me towards my mom. Because I was so blinded by legal formalities and public discourse on the way society was supposed to be based on our laws, I was completely disregarding my own mother’s experience and struggle and some of you still do. That’s what unchecked privileges do.

But the violence of micro-aggressions generally isn’t rooted in the action or statement or its intent per say. Rather, most of the time, it’s in the way they are enshrined in wider systemic discrimination as repetitive and accumulated attacks on an individual across different moments and perpetrators. It turns an action which might appear inoffensive to the perpetrator (like touching someone’s hair) but will be taken as something extremely disrespectful to the receiver.

Growing up in France, hair on TV ads and the hair products on supermarket shelves were different than mine, the same way my friends at school could all have those flowy ponytails which I felt very sad my hair type didn’t allow I couldn’t have (until I begged my mom to relax my hair and she agreed when I was 7 because being a kid of a divorced couple she couldn’t take care of my hair for the whole month of summer at my father’s). But in any case, my relationship to my hair was the first instance where I felt part of a “minority” let’s say.

Getting into middle school and puberty, of course everybody gets criticized, shamed or made fun of for their difference: it’s part of teenage years. But when minor teenage bullying cross-cuts a subject which society marginalizes you for (as futile as hair and physical appearance can) and which throughout your life you’re going to get comments and/or random people’s opinions on all the time. All of this tends to weigh on one’s mind and if all the while, it is being deemed unattractive by the male gaze, then this innocent teenage bullying suddenly makes you, from a young age, internalize racism and hatred towards your own self, with the courtesy of mainstream western beauty standards.

(And yes, still today some men that I’ve frequented have dared to tell me they “didn’t mind my hair curly but they preferred my hair straight because they think I’m much prettier with” DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY HAIR?)

I hope now it is pretty straightforward, why when my relatives tell me that my hair is impractical, I go bonkers. I’m simply sick of society, of men, of my teenage years, everything that made me internalize white beauty standards and told me that my natural appearance was not enough, not practical or not fit for them. And don’t even get me started on the ones that feel entitled enough to touch a part of my body without asking for my consent (here, only, my hair but still): Don’t touch my hair nor feel entitled to give me a judgement on my appearance.

Lastly, to put it all perspective, would you go around touching people’s ass and telling them: “well I don’t really like your butt, I'd rather you wear shapewear to change it” ?

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-66723

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000026268247&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en-france_5438453_4355770.html

Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. New York, NY : Seal Press

[freedomss0n]

Words by Hiba Krisht. Hiba is Lebanese and Palestinian, as well as a scholar and brilliant writer, so when she talks about Palestinian welfare and discourse about Palestine, everyone should listen.

"I'm at the point where I can't see how focus on the Israel Palestine question re: Chicago Dyke March is anything other than derailment. I'd also like to say that perception that pro-Palestine sentiment here is being silenced *as a general trend* very much does not sit well with me because I believe the silencing to be happening the other way around, and think this is in fact a longstanding destructive feature of discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause. Also, I believe most of those engaging in defense of a pro-Palestinian liberation stance right now mean well but do not understand how much its framing decenters actual Palestinian welfare.

I will elaborate on both counts. I'm agitated from all sides about this and I can't do brevity so bear with me I guess.

First, the derailment. It's of particularly troubling sort because it falls into a larger pattern of whataboutism where what *should be* a case of clearcut antisemitism cannot ever be identified and unilaterally condemned by the left without also being hashed and rehashed in exculpatory ways "because Israel."

This is ESPECIALLY troubling when: - There is a persistent phenomenon that's almost like a lefty inversion of the concept Israeli exceptionalism. Like a reverse- exceptionalism, whereby discussion of Israel's transgressions are held to singular standards of scrutiny to the exception of other nations/populations with comparable and/or far more deplorable histories and actions and crises. And in that I am including all the unspeakable injustice and destruction the larger MENA region has wrought to Palestinians, and how accountability seems no concern there, in part *because* of eternal return to obsessive, unilateral focus on Israel as the central Palestinian issue.

- Cases of anti Muslim bigotry aren't held to the same scrutiny. The fact that people will demur about antisemitism but not anti-Muslim bigotry betrays a terrible lack of self awareness re: double standards. I mean, if you want to go 'head and make weak arguments about how religious symbols are politically wielded, I'm going to have to start wondering why you aren't referencing the much more appalling and deadly scope of human rights abuses committed under Muslim banners whenever the question of banning Muslim symbols comes up. Which would be a clearly terrible argument, but maybe it's worth reflecting why the same argument suddenly makes sense when it comes to Jewish symbols.

- Casual antisemitism often manifests as (among other things) conflations between Jewish symbols or beliefs / various Zionist ones / various Israeli nationalist ones. We ALREADY know the Dyke March incident to be an iteration of this problem. Now think about how fucked up what happened next is: the ban of a Jewish symbol at a public event based on a bigoted conflation is called out as anti-Semitic. Then, as a kind of precondition for defense against or acknowledgement of such anti-Semitism, people on the left apparently see fit to hold Jewish people accountable, individually and as a group, for *the same bigoted conflations targeting them*, basically needing Jewish people to declare their politics and/or unilaterally renounce Zionism -- essentially acting as gatekeepers despite being outsiders operating from apparently rather reductive and narrow presumptions of Zionist politics, since they somehow have the arrogance of assuming they understand and can judge what any given Jewish person's Zionist adherence entails and means based on the label alone??? Who the fuck else does this? Who the fuck else has to go through this? Do we have to establish and approve of the political and ideological leanings of Muslims in order to defend them against anti-Muslim bigotry, or do we engage in whataboutism re: the scourge of political Islamism in the Middle East to determine if Muslims have the right to display their religious symbols in the west?

Now the Palestine thing. And necessary conversations. And silencing and whatnot.

Even points that are so reasonable and evident they may well be tautologies by now, like 'Palestinians are entitled to basic human rights', bear a different weight when made in these contexts. They don't exist in vacuum, but carry the shadow of a discourse that already has huge issues with privileging particularly anti-Zionist or anti-Israel Palestinian advocacy no matter how tangential to the conversation, and never mind what else is minimized and derailed in the process.

I am not doubting the sincerity and concern of my friends who are struggling to express pro-Palestine sentiment while being confused by hostility right now, but I would urge a more thorough consideration of the relative space taken up by the respective conversations thus far, and to not confuse long overdue push-back from folks who have every reason to be frustrated and sick of derailment and semantic squabbles over definitions of Zionism every time anti-semitism comes up.

If it seems like there is rejection from the left when you want to assert a pro-Palestinian stance here, it is less likely to be because people have a problem with pro-Palestinian politics as such, and more likely to be because there is a salient point regarding how cavalier antisemitism already is today and how these patterns of derailment every damn time end up gatekeeping attempts to counter an insidious kind of racism that can and must be discussed without forcing marginalized people to jump through the Israel Blame Game hoops to defend their humanity. The Israel Palestine thing needs to stop hijacking conversations about antisemitism. Palestinian welfare does not suffer if people refuse to derail conversations about anti-semitism, but conversations about anti-semitism certainly suffer when what-about-Palestine pops up.

And that's all besides the fact that no matter how well-meaning, this Palestine-specific whataboutism does not contribute anything appreciable to Palestinian welfare and is so oblivious in some ways it's kind of heartbreaking to try to navigate through. I firmly believe that the kneejerk way the Palestinian Cause is held up like a trump card whenever convenient and the infuriating reverse exceptionalism with which the conflict is treated has been a firm factor in prolonging the crisis and exacerbating Palestinian suffering. I'm struggling to find the words for why it troubles me so much to see all these conversations stuck on questions of whether anti Zionism is anti Semitism because don't forget Israel and what about accountability for Palestine.

Please. Please. Please try to understand that an anti-Zionist pro-Palestine liberation stance is not one that needs championing in the left, that nobody fucking lets us forget Israel when we try to talk about Palestine, and nobody stops talking about Palestine when anyone mentions Israel, and it hasn't done shit for diaspora or territory Palestinians except turn us into a handy slogan. Establishing a stance of basic advocacy for the rights and welfare of the Palestinian people is not what the discourse lacks, it is what the discourse needs to *move past* already. Everybody is well-versed and comfortable with the Israel Blame Game-- it drowns out and supersedes everything else, and it's everything else that Palestinian advocacy desperately needs.

This is something that frustrates me to no end because it's not reducible to something like Israeli conduct being dealt with disproportionate scrutiny in the left *as such*, but as a function of urgency and relative space. When Israel overshadows discourse about Palestinian welfare even though it is Arabs who are responsible for the most staggering and horrific ongoing Palestinian abuses, we have a problem. And it can never be talked about or addressed because only Israel's actions are viewed with agency and significance, and attributing Palestinian suffering to anything else is instantly condemned as insidious detraction.

So you can see how it is frustrating to go through the whole 'is pro-palestinian anti-zionism anti-semitic' rigmarole when it is so often a distraction from more functional questions of Palestinian welfare.

Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are also anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are not anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of Zionism that are consistent with upholding the rights and freedoms of Palestinian Arabs, and, fact: there are kinds that are categorically not.

Educated opinion: Not only is anti-Zionism the established and normative stance across most of the Middle East, but, if we're being honest, probably the most prevalent and established type of anti-Zionism in the discourse is that which engages in solid pro-Palestinian advocacy while also falling into both gross and casual anti-Semitism. This is definitely the case in the broader discourse on the issue in the Middle East, and what's more, there is next to no self-awareness of the anti-Semitic assumptions, myths, and bigotries, not to mention the historical revisionism, threading popular and political anti-Zionism in the MENA region and popular Palestinian and Lebanese culture as well. This is a problem, and one that will never be addressed as long as pro-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are presumed to be wholly non-overlapping binaries by well-meaning leftists. It is both possible and necessary to acknowledge and mount critique of anti-semitic elements in pro-Palestine discourse while maintaining Palestinian advocacy. Acknowledging anti-Semitism in the discourse is not going to undermine the Palestinian cause. Again, people don't need to be perfect moral agents to justify a defense of their humanity.

Educated opinion: Leftist discourse centering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is overall entrenched in rigid, binary thinking and overwhelmingly leans pro-Palestine but in unfortunately too-basic, reductive ways. It already has an ideological rigidity problem. The discourse is such that to be pro-Palestine is to be above all transcendentally righteous: the lines of oppression and blame are clear and brook no further complexity; it is the cause no reasonable person can deny or fail to center in any conversation, and Palestinian advocacy is almost synonymous with condemnation for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and aught else.

It is troubled with issues of allegiance and abstraction-- maintaining certain principled stances re: the Cause is treated as an almost inviolable tenet for anybody who can claim to care about Palestine, despite the fact that the central narrative of the Cause pits the immediate welfare and prosperity of generations of living, breathing Palestinians against the memory of a Palestine that has not existed for decades and an abstract future promise of a right to return to a place that never again will be. The narrative may have once been in service of the people, but it has not been so in a long time. And it is only the narrative that is treated with sanctity by the most vocal champions of Palestine, and if it comes at the expense of Palestinian lives like in Yarmouk, so be it. Palestinian advocacy is more about condemning Israel than it is about supporting Palestine, and that is the problem.

It's beginning to feel like despair, seeing how pro-Palestinian discourse is framed in terms of the questions of Zionism and anti-Zionism over and again, constantly centering and recentering the question of Palestinian welfare as a foil to Israeli aggression in broad nationalistic and/or existentialist terms, assuming unilateral causes, ascribing agency very selectively to regional actors, brooking no interrogation of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim agency in the conflict, and obsessively resistant to moving past the past.

It's been decades and Palestinians continue to suffer large-scale crises in basic resources, public health, trauma, and disenfranchisement, and they have largely been allowed to persist in the name *of* Palestine, at the hands of Arab regimes that shrug off all accountability in Israel's direction, though for fifty years diaspora Palestinians in the larger Levant have been purely at the mercy of the Arab states housing them. We do not need to hear tired pro-liberation stances when it is those very stances that are used to justify keeping us holed up in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps, stateless, in suspended animation, without civil rights or wealth or upwards mobility, dying slowly of poverty and deplorable living conditions and isolation if we're lucky, and if we're unlucky, until a guy like Assad comes along and murders, maims, starves, and makes refugees out of a whole city of us-- and yet it is in the name of liberating Palestine that Assadist discourse proliferates, being anti-Israel, and Palestine's catastrophe is only and ever subsumed into the crimes of Israel and not of those of Syria or Lebanon or Assad or Hamas or the PA or Fatah or the GCC states or anybody else. When I want to talk about Palestinian advocacy, I want to talk about Assad and the nearly 200,000 Palestinians in Yarmouk camp that are now dead or gone or starving under siege and I want to talk about how the Lebanese state has made pariahs and a lost people out of *generations* of diaspora Palestinians practically quarantined in refugee camps because of petty sectarian concerns and I want to talk about the Palestinian political elite grievously frittering away resources and opportunities that could have prevented significant Palestinian suffering and death because of political feuds and a reckless privileging of a jihadi cause over popular welfare-- but I cannot, because the justifications, distractions, conspiracy theories loop incessantly back to Israel. Which cements *my* concern that these conversations are not really *about* Palestinian welfare at all."

[rook-seidhr]

I'm at the point where I can't see how focus on the Israel Palestine question re: Chicago Dyke March is anything other than derailment. I'd also like to say that perception that pro-Palestine sentiment here is being silenced *as a general trend* very much does not sit well with me because I believe the silencing to be happening the other way around, and think this is in fact a longstanding destructive feature of discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause. Also, I believe most of those engaging in defense of a pro-Palestinian liberation stance right now mean well but do not understand how much its framing decenters actual Palestinian welfare. I will elaborate on both counts. I'm agitated from all sides about this and I can't do brevity so bear with me I guess. First, the derailment. It's of particularly troubling sort because it falls into a larger pattern of whataboutism where what *should be* a case of clearcut antisemitism cannot ever be identified and unilaterally condemned by the left without also being hashed and rehashed in exculpatory ways "because Israel." This is ESPECIALLY troubling when: - There is a persistent phenomenon that's almost like a lefty inversion of the concept Israeli exceptionalism. Like a reverse- exceptionalism, whereby discussion of Israel's transgressions are held to singular standards of scrutiny to the exception of other nations/populations with comparable and/or far more deplorable histories and actions and crises. And in that I am including all the unspeakable injustice and destruction the larger MENA region has wrought to Palestinians, and how accountability seems no concern there, in part *because* of eternal return to obsessive, unilateral focus on Israel as the central Palestinian issue. - Cases of anti Muslim bigotry aren't held to the same scrutiny. The fact that people will demur about antisemitism but not anti-Muslim bigotry betrays a terrible lack of self awareness re: double standards. I mean, if you want to go 'head and make weak arguments about how religious symbols are politically wielded, I'm going to have to start wondering why you aren't referencing the much more appalling and deadly scope of human rights abuses committed under Muslim banners whenever the question of banning Muslim symbols comes up. Which would be a clearly terrible argument, but maybe it's worth reflecting why the same argument suddenly makes sense when it comes to Jewish symbols. - Casual antisemitism often manifests as (among other things) conflations between Jewish symbols or beliefs / various Zionist ones / various Israeli nationalist ones. We ALREADY know the Dyke March incident to be an iteration of this problem. Now think about how fucked up what happened next is: the ban of a Jewish symbol at a public event based on a bigoted conflation is called out as anti-Semitic. Then, as a kind of precondition for defense against or acknowledgement of such anti-Semitism, people on the left apparently see fit to hold Jewish people accountable, individually and as a group, for *the same bigoted conflations targeting them*, basically needing Jewish people to declare their politics and/or unilaterally renounce Zionism -- essentially acting as gatekeepers despite being outsiders operating from apparently rather reductive and narrow presumptions of Zionist politics, since they somehow have the arrogance of assuming they understand and can judge what any given Jewish person's Zionist adherence entails and means based on the label alone??? Who the fuck else does this? Who the fuck else has to go through this? Do we have to establish and approve of the political and ideological leanings of Muslims in order to defend them against anti-Muslim bigotry, or do we engage in whataboutism re: the scourge of political Islamism in the Middle East to determine if Muslims have the right to display their religious symbols in the west? Now the Palestine thing. And necessary conversations. And silencing and whatnot. Even points that are so reasonable and evident they may well be tautologies by now, like 'Palestinians are entitled to basic human rights', bear a different weight when made in these contexts. They don't exist in vacuum, but carry the shadow of a discourse that already has huge issues with privileging particularly anti-Zionist or anti-Israel Palestinian advocacy no matter how tangential to the conversation, and never mind what else is minimized and derailed in the process. I am not doubting the sincerity and concern of my friends who are struggling to express pro-Palestine sentiment while being confused by hostility right now, but I would urge a more thorough consideration of the relative space taken up by the respective conversations thus far, and to not confuse long overdue push-back from folks who have every reason to be frustrated and sick of derailment and semantic squabbles over definitions of Zionism every time anti-semitism comes up. If it seems like there is rejection from the left when you want to assert a pro-Palestinian stance here, it is less likely to be because people have a problem with pro-Palestinian politics as such, and more likely to be because there is a salient point regarding how cavalier antisemitism already is today and how these patterns of derailment every damn time end up gatekeeping attempts to counter an insidious kind of racism that can and must be discussed without forcing marginalized people to jump through the Israel Blame Game hoops to defend their humanity. The Israel Palestine thing needs to stop hijacking conversations about antisemitism. Palestinian welfare does not suffer if people refuse to derail conversations about anti-semitism, but conversations about anti-semitism certainly suffer when what-about-Palestine pops up. And that's all besides the fact that no matter how well-meaning, this Palestine-specific whataboutism does not contribute anything appreciable to Palestinian welfare and is so oblivious in some ways it's kind of heartbreaking to try to navigate through. I firmly believe that the kneejerk way the Palestinian Cause is held up like a trump card whenever convenient and the infuriating reverse exceptionalism with which the conflict is treated has been a firm factor in prolonging the crisis and exacerbating Palestinian suffering. I'm struggling to find the words for why it troubles me so much to see all these conversations stuck on questions of whether anti Zionism is anti Semitism because don't forget Israel and what about accountability for Palestine. Please. Please. Please try to understand that an anti-Zionist pro-Palestine liberation stance is not one that needs championing in the left, that nobody fucking lets us forget Israel when we try to talk about Palestine, and nobody stops talking about Palestine when anyone mentions Israel, and it hasn't done shit for diaspora or territory Palestinians except turn us into a handy slogan. Establishing a stance of basic advocacy for the rights and welfare of the Palestinian people is not what the discourse lacks, it is what the discourse needs to *move past* already. Everybody is well-versed and comfortable with the Israel Blame Game-- it drowns out and supersedes everything else, and it's everything else that Palestinian advocacy desperately needs. This is something that frustrates me to no end because it's not reducible to something like Israeli conduct being dealt with disproportionate scrutiny in the left *as such*, but as a function of urgency and relative space. When Israel overshadows discourse about Palestinian welfare even though it is Arabs who are responsible for the most staggering and horrific ongoing Palestinian abuses, we have a problem. And it can never be talked about or addressed because only Israel's actions are viewed with agency and significance, and attributing Palestinian suffering to anything else is instantly condemned as insidious detraction. So you can see how it is frustrating to go through the whole 'is pro-palestinian anti-zionism anti-semitic' rigmarole when it is so often a distraction from more functional questions of Palestinian welfare. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are also anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of anti-Zionism that are pro-Palestinian rights and that are not anti-Semitic. Fact: There are kinds of Zionism that are consistent with upholding the rights and freedoms of Palestinian Arabs, and, fact: there are kinds that are categorically not. Educated opinion: Not only is anti-Zionism the established and normative stance across most of the Middle East, but, if we're being honest, probably the most prevalent and established type of anti-Zionism in the discourse is that which engages in solid pro-Palestinian advocacy while also falling into both gross and casual anti-Semitism. This is definitely the case in the broader discourse on the issue in the Middle East, and what's more, there is next to no self-awareness of the anti-Semitic assumptions, myths, and bigotries, not to mention the historical revisionism, threading popular and political anti-Zionism in the MENA region and popular Palestinian and Lebanese culture as well. This is a problem, and one that will never be addressed as long as pro-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are presumed to be wholly non-overlapping binaries by well-meaning leftists. It is both possible and necessary to acknowledge and mount critique of anti-semitic elements in pro-Palestine discourse while maintaining Palestinian advocacy. Acknowledging anti-Semitism in the discourse is not going to undermine the Palestinian cause. Again, people don't need to be perfect moral agents to justify a defense of their humanity. Educated opinion: Leftist discourse centering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is overall entrenched in rigid, binary thinking and overwhelmingly leans pro-Palestine but in unfortunately too-basic, reductive ways. It already has an ideological rigidity problem. The discourse is such that to be pro-Palestine is to be above all transcendentally righteous: the lines of oppression and blame are clear and brook no further complexity; it is the cause no reasonable person can deny or fail to center in any conversation, and Palestinian advocacy is almost synonymous with condemnation for the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and aught else. It is troubled with issues of allegiance and abstraction-- maintaining certain principled stances re: the Cause is treated as an almost inviolable tenet for anybody who can claim to care about Palestine, despite the fact that the central narrative of the Cause pits the immediate welfare and prosperity of generations of living, breathing Palestinians against the memory of a Palestine that has not existed for decades and an abstract future promise of a right to return to a place that never again will be. The narrative may have once been in service of the people, but it has not been so in a long time. And it is only the narrative that is treated with sanctity by the most vocal champions of Palestine, and if it comes at the expense of Palestinian lives like in Yarmouk, so be it. Palestinian advocacy is more about condemning Israel than it is about supporting Palestine, and that is the problem. It's beginning to feel like despair, seeing how pro-Palestinian discourse is framed in terms of the questions of Zionism and anti-Zionism over and again, constantly centering and recentering the question of Palestinian welfare as a foil to Israeli aggression in broad nationalistic and/or existentialist terms, assuming unilateral causes, ascribing agency very selectively to regional actors, brooking no interrogation of Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim agency in the conflict, and obsessively resistant to moving past the past. It's been decades and Palestinians continue to suffer large-scale crises in basic resources, public health, trauma, and disenfranchisement, and they have largely been allowed to persist in the name *of* Palestine, at the hands of Arab regimes that shrug off all accountability in Israel's direction, though for fifty years diaspora Palestinians in the larger Levant have been purely at the mercy of the Arab states housing them. We do not need to hear tired pro-liberation stances when it is those very stances that are used to justify keeping us holed up in Lebanese and Syrian refugee camps, stateless, in suspended animation, without civil rights or wealth or upwards mobility, dying slowly of poverty and deplorable living conditions and isolation if we're lucky, and if we're unlucky, until a guy like Assad comes along and murders, maims, starves, and makes refugees out of a whole city of us-- and yet it is in the name of liberating Palestine that Assadist discourse proliferates, being anti-Israel, and Palestine's catastrophe is only and ever subsumed into the crimes of Israel and not of those of Syria or Lebanon or Assad or Hamas or the PA or Fatah or the GCC states or anybody else. When I want to talk about Palestinian advocacy, I want to talk about Assad and the nearly 200,000 Palestinians in Yarmouk camp that are now dead or gone or starving under siege and I want to talk about how the Lebanese state has made pariahs and a lost people out of *generations* of diaspora Palestinians practically quarantined in refugee camps because of petty sectarian concerns and I want to talk about the Palestinian political elite grievously frittering away resources and opportunities that could have prevented significant Palestinian suffering and death because of political feuds and a reckless privileging of a jihadi cause over popular welfare-- but I cannot, because the justifications, distractions, conspiracy theories loop incessantly back to Israel. Which cements *my* concern that these conversations are not really *about* Palestinian welfare at all.

Hiba Bint Zeinab, a Palestinian-Lebanese woman living in the US (reposted by permission)

[nielgnesin]

What Does 420 Really mean 420 is upon us so I figured this was a good time to give you the origins of the term for the history sometimes used for many years it can be a verb like hey you want to 421 is the general now describing the marijuana culture is referred 4:20 PM but the origins of the term do have something to do according to the oldest information that this community has which is the surprisingly good investigative reporting upon Times Magazine the term for 20 was in the Southern California town called Sandra Fayelle in 1971 a group of teenagers at San Rafael high school that year started using they would get together and smoke up after school right around Fort let's meet at 4:20 PM at the statue and get hot so that's the origin but nowadays 420 has become a general term for the cannabis culture it's everywhere symbolic numbers represents the culture of people put for 20 underclothing on accessories to show the love we also become as I said the day the 20th day of the fourth month April 20 marijuana for years the state has been about protesting marijuana prohibition but for a lot of people it's just an excuse to come hang out at the major municipal park in town with like-minded people and smoke up out of public while it's important to understand that places were smoking up in public is illegal this practice doesn't become legal for the day it is true that one crowd show up since they're quite simply used to it happening annually for 20 is like an annual Palash lot of smokers that dates back to the 80s and 90s it's not tough to find out where the nearest 428i near you takes place usually just look for the biggest park or outside your local City Hall or some other Legislature building that you have often there's a Facebook sitting event or in the case of some cities there's a dedicated website because it's such a big effect in Canada where I am traditionally the biggest for 20 Avantis been to Vancouver one if you have never been there it was fucking awesome 420 the meaning of Portland here's what I'm gonna play on you because it's kinda like you know man it's happening soon and so this'll be a little history lesson so California back in the day back in the day for most of us my 420 probably I watching this at 4:20 AM for some of you that may mean something that there a lot he probably thinks somewhat mature Patoma has around here didn't know it for 20 Finkbine so we thought if we got a primetime show another network it was even Aaron Sorkin show 428i laughing right now to invite someone and to explain his Steven Hager the editor-in-chief of high Times Magazine I know I'm Boston public on the television show that we present controversy about or 2011 the kids being involved in 420 and we didn't know what the number for 20 net but apparently if Signification with Marijuana It's Right Yeah It's It's Been a Codeword for Many Years inside the Counterculture Is a Code for Marijuana No What Is It Where to Come from It Actually Came in 1971 Six Students at San Rafael High School Event once we started publicizing the living room global so what's the special about the numbers for 2012 they picked for 20 because it was a time date of the need to go look for abandoned hotpatch that they found a treasure map too but it soon just became uniport 20 has a lot of meaning now if you need anything from you want to go smoke some pot do you have any pot on you you know Dietze 428i Oreganos Buddys away for this persecuted culture to talk to each other and not be exposed people that you know like teachers and police or people and the culture is there any truth to the rumor that for 20 also meant there is marijuana smoking or drug use going on basically that was one that was Annette that was a false rumor a people to try to figure out where to come from I'm so popular I really think that what this shows is that the counterculture first thing I want to see here is the first real national holiday of this culture is emerging and what interesting is that it's it's around the same time as always under the holidays like Passover and Easter and it's universally locally adopted by millions of people now that's a holiday right now why are we having a holiday celebrating the holidays that parents might take away from doing this kind of thing right and if you don't believe that this is a culture I should say a pop to the Highpines of marijuana by children were very much against that but you know the counterculture has a sacrament that sacrament is cannabis and we believe that the laws against the wrong knees are very deep-seated believes so it's it's only natural that our first day holiday would involve this to what's gonna happen for 25 people Ganxsta what's gonna happen Central peak of Marin County that's the birthplace of 420 and that's where the tradition can establish for the longest what I'd like to see happen I like to see the moment of silence for peace in the drug war I like to see a moment of silence for the victims of Waco and Columbine in Oklahoma City and I know there's a lot of you know very tragic events that are happening right around the same time and I think that we need to study why the things are happening why is there so much violence in our culture and really what the 60s counterculture represents is nonviolence and peace and this is what we're trying to bring to the table for 25 Potranco cheesiest part of a different kind of culture I see as part of an emerging spirituality that I call the counterculture and why would countercultures like for 27 beginning to be sorted out or paragraph hop why the public was there gonna be a celebration would preferred to do that in Rome they developed a secret code the symbol of fish and when when they would need and they didn't know if they were Christians are not one with joy have to dish the other with what we've been doing for 20 for a long time now 70s and it's time to bring it out into the open time to show the world that were legitimate minority group that suffered persecution you going to critical process to try to change how you feel about the way you're at your group well I think that it is the initiatives that you see in California at the other nine states in the past medical marijuana laws these are his initiative to be pushed forward by the counterculture our agenda and we really want to protect the sick people first you know we don't care about our own personal use as much we care about people with serious illness so that you know we spent the last 10 years trying to get to people access marijuana and if you get there before whiteheads and birthday what time will the departed used for medicine is the flower and the rest of the stock can be used for about 40,000 different items and everything that used to be made out of now made out of petrochemical which is called the major cause of pollution on the planet so we really like to see farmers growing non-THC industrial help as a commodity or to replace all the chemical products I have hi5 magazine thanks for filling us in on 420 you're missing out I even recommend going if you don't smoke weed it's simply an incredible cultural phenomenon to be bold enough for Mike for tonight I have myself a little hatchcover here made of people. Is that the longest sentence you have ever read?

[areyoueallyreadingthisright-blog]

**Dear Gun Violence**

(A satirical pen-pal letter to Gun Violence)

Dear Gun Violence,

How the hell are you, you son of a bitch?

I thought we talked about this already, you can’t just keep showing up and ruining the mood all the time. You're being a total square GV. We strictly wanted either one of the two situations to unfold; something involving an organized crime shoot-out or some act of terrorism involving the use of the 2nd Amendment to justify racially charged acts of “Pre-emptive protection,” since it seems like that’s the stuff that you and your pals are so infatuated with nowadays.

Anyway, I just wanted to send this letter to check-up on you; I hope things have been going well since, like the beginning of time since guns were invented. No foul intention mind you; Life is a beast and you just have to handle the beast sometimes, we get it.

But the truth behind this is that there's a collection of scenes, a collection of emotions and ideals that are coupled with unbridled anger either in the form of fear “inferiority” or malicious intent like “perceived superiority.” But where does this anger stem? And is it even anger in some cases? I think that’s the biggest question that we’ve been tackling lately with relation to firearms in general.

In my opinion we treat firearms the same way that we treat monster trucks. At face value they both are impressive pieces of machinery in their own right. Both very capable of harboring destruction when used in tandem with initiative. So why am I trying to make this an analogy you might ask? Think about it, monster trucks themselves are pretty cool; and yeah, maybe their purpose for carnal entertainment is sometimes a bit overrated. But what is fascinating about those kinds of places? And one of the reasons why live music is so encapsulating to so many people. Ontological Design; a device used to recreate mystical and almost magical moments. A place or places “where things happen” that transcend all things and creates its own matter and gravitational force to supplement its existence. Like live music and monster trucks and firearms, they all evoke a rare facet of sometimes perturbing but also very real ideas that we inherit or subconsciously recognize simply based on the association that we have with that particular object. Many times it's by way of feelings that we have carried and stuck with throughout our lives. Memories or some asphyxiation of the real world that grants the phantom memories of those histories.

Or I suppose in other cases, we are persuaded with a very well presented "story" of how , for some apparently *God-granted* reason we are supposed to follow in the footsteps of someone we've never met, and in order to be successful in the after-life, we need to carry-out these acts of "religious freedom" against people who are  identified as a “perceived threat” (see retribution) based on pure speculation. Speculation that stems from uncertainty, irrational fear, or even some hocus-pocus tradition that has insinuated some level of aggression or distaste to an individual group of people for no reason other than to maintain conventionalism.

So all these things considered, many of the conflicts that arise from these "ontological awakenings" typically tend to evoke combat or confrontation, often in the form of a battle with words, maybe sometimes staged as acts of pride under the guise of fear. Mind you, this is still very much a perception of my own understanding of how the presence of firearms has influenced and molded our history and society.

And yet one of the things that I've thought about lately in relation to firearms is this "evoking initiative" sensation that people experience when they are situated in these positions of "perceived-power." What is it about being at a live performance or attending a monster truck show that makes them so captivating. For example, most people would be fairly neutral about monster trucks in general, simply because their level of engagement with monster trucks is fairly low on the scale of "things I interact with on a daily basis." But let's say you get VIP Tickets to the monster show and are offered the chance to ride in a monster truck with a professional. What say your response? (Most would answer Yes! Because when's the next time this will be an opportunity?) So what happens after the professional sit-in with a monster truck driver? You might feel totally different; whether the outcome was positive or negative, since you are eventually exposed to that mentality of "carnage and destruction," a very basic yet powerful level of subconscious influence, especially if you're not aware of it to begin with. You get that dosage of "fulfillment" or "rush." Like the phenomenon "runner's high," which is a big release of endorphins (chemicals in your body similar to morphine) that give runners a very euphoric "feel-good" feeling after long runs.

That's how I feel we think about firearms in the United States. With that same reverence, that same deep respect. But where does the line begin to blur? At what point do we undermine the importance of emphasizing civility at the cost of perpetuating our conventionalism? If conventionalism is similar to tradition then why are some of us so unwilling to pass our traditions aside for the sake of saving innocent lives?

I guess it really just boils down to how much individuals respect others and what the cost of a life is to them. Maybe many of those individuals who prefer to live in exclusivity value the life of another individual less, since they would typically have less human interaction (not always the case, but a heavy generalization) compared to someone who lived in a populated urban area. If that's the case - do these individuals get to offer the same level of opinion as others do? Despite them being a product of their own design.

And that's really when we step into various theories of gun control and the presence of firearms in society today. We are too inundated with pursuing so many agendas related to firearms that we sort of just let the river run under the bridge; totally disregarding that the river is running red with blood. So where does this "evoking initiative" narrative come into play? When people are often found in "the zone," what's the last thing that they're thinking about? Literally anything else beside whatever it is that they're occupied with. So if we take any of the most recent events related to school shootings within the past 20 years, there's somehow this very common thread of why these individuals felt compelled to proceed how they did. (Lack of social connection, victim of bullying, mental health issues gone unaddressed, etc).  Pair that with the mysticism and sheer level of “perceived-power” of a firearm, and you can imagine why so many of these tragic incidents are occurring where they are.

                We look at how the structure of the American Education system has evolved throughout the past couple decades, and we find an environment that has dramatically shifted from embracing an ideal of community in schools and instead has been substituted (almost like a vacuum) with social media. The tolerance of instant gratification has raised alarmingly fast. My age-bracket being at the very cusp of that start. Yet this idealization of instant gratification has left teachers with pop quizzes and paper text-books to compete with their attention? It’s no wonder the United States suffered a deficit of public educators, school teachers, or mentors. So how does the attention of social media influence the proverbial “playground” in the public education system in today’s world?

At times (especially in schools) I think that social media becomes this poisonous medium of public humiliation, self-inflicted isolation, and a reinforcement of fabricated realities where we are defeated and choose to fill in the gaps of others’ lives so that we want to make what seems like a great story/life just perfect.

And of course another result of immersion into instant gratification is this idea of PCT (problem centric thinking). This framework of thinking that is devoid of highlighting the successes or goals in your day-to-day, but instead grinds you for the mistakes or failures that you’ve run into. It’s a combination of pessimism and cynicism rolled up and presented in a way that made me think, “This is normally how people feel everyday.” I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The whole “no pain, no gain” mantra sort of resonates when I find myself falling into the problem centric thinking. This idea that suffering needs to take place before growth can ensue. Sufferance is a very powerful emotion, but I don’t think its part of the recipe for growth.

On top of everything else, its this thought of how unlikely it seems to use weapons against others with whom you share no past. While there is definitely a correlation based on the level of isolation someone may be feeling or who they attribute as a catalyst in their life up until this point; but why is there such a commitment with firearms that we see a split between victims that either had significant relations with or absolutely no relation with? At this point the genesis of motivation is less of a cause and more of a symptom. We are so quick to place accusations based on very generalized or reinforced ideas of why the perpetrator did what they did. And yet we see that these individuals are willing to carry-out violence or aggression in environments they have little to no past or association with.

But who I am to say any of this isn’t difficult for you, Gun Violence? The invention of the firearm was inevitable. But I think the excuse for “ensuring protection” and “keeping the peace” or better yet, offering our “thoughts and prayers” as solace has turned this whole get-up into some “down-range” demonstration of potentially religious, racist, and emotional acts of violence at the cost of I honestly don’t know how many lives have been lost. The thought that even in as much of this text that I’ve written, the names of the victims alone would vastly outweigh my character limit for, I don’t know, the next couple pages most likely is haunting.

And it sickens me to know this is something I have to live with every day.

But really Gun Violence (GV), I understand you have to get out those really juvenile urges, so it’s important that you express yourself in ways that make you, you. I know you’re not a very popular pick amongst the majority, so maybe its best if you pursue a career that fits you more appropriately. Like for example, I would probably suggest attending and/or ruining events for Water Guns fights. Or if you’re feeling more PG-13, maybe even show up to Nerf Gun fights at 12-year olds parties if you really want to act like the sick fuck you are. All-in-all, we love to see you go [forever] and get really disappointed and annoyed when I have to see you on TV again. Like almost as disappointed and annoyed at the frequency of how many times I feel like Amber Alerts need to be matched to the same intensity for a Tweet onslaught by our POTUS. Like, I need to know that I should be preparing myself for what’s to come, you know? I can’t casually receive Critical Updates about our Government through a social media platform only designed for 140 characters (honestly feel like the only reason they upped the limit is because of Donald Trump).

But, go take care of yourself GV, okay? You could always try going after laser tag, ya know? You tried that back in 80s, 1979 to be exact. Didn’t really work out for you, huh? Couldn’t really make a career out of it, shame.  Are you still disappointed that laser tag isn’t a full contact sport? Or is it that Star Wars made super unrealistic expectations about lasers and blasters?

You know, you know what, you don’t need to be doing this GV. We had some good times. Some really really great times. And they were usually always when you weren’t around. And by “we” I mean literally everyone else. I know you have your enemies out there; like gun control or fingerprint-enabled security. I get it, you're just not the one we’re looking for when we’re trying to make change. We have a system in place for that, sort of.

What I don’t understand is that we are constantly being told by a system that we believe is “protecting us” (or at least it should be). So why are you pushing so hard to get people to remember who you are, Gun Violence? The real question is when we are we going to be focusing on the other factor playing into this mess? Stop trying to make Gun Violence a thing, it’s never going to be a thing. Considering your age I can understand why you’re so reluctant to go away. But stop making appearances at the drop of a hat; you’re not a reality that I want to engage with. There are guns, and then there’s violence. They can occur together but that does not justify your existence to continually propagate the idea that guns are inherently violent.  

Also, stop this nonsense like you are always innocent in the face of these tragedies. You berate these people who feel compelled to take action with firearms, and then try to completely disregard that you were an accomplice in the whole situation. It’s as if to spite them for being victims of a nihilistic world that you made. You keep trying to hide behind this idea that there are other people/things to blame for this uprising. And you’re right. It’s hard to overtake a castle with a super-fortress and an army of people. But if you take away the fortress, you only get the people. That’s the point I’m trying to get across; that’s what all these letters have been about. I know you enjoy being recognized because that’s the only thing that we can seem to keep trending in the United States in this era, but I refuse to remain silent while you continue to exist openly.

Your coming-to-be was both unwarranted and unwelcome simultaneously. Like making a gurnt (which I’ve been told is just a loud excessive queef made from a woman sitting on an exercise ball) while lying face-down on a massage table. That’s all I really wanted to say to you after all this time, GV. Sometimes you don’t want to deal with a woman farting profusely on an exercise ball; but someone is gonna have to face the music and tell her that vaginal flatulence on a public piece of equipment is gross and uncivil. Shit, even if it was her own exercise ball, that’s still gross.

If a restraining order could be filed against intangible concepts that are used to further push an unnecessary divide you know we fucking would,

The Internetional Fireworks Association (IFA)*

* = Actually the International Fireworks Association

[mdye]

Up until about a year ago, I worked at a historic site in the South that included an old house and a nearby plantation. My job was to lead tours and tell guests about the people who made plantations possible: the slaves.

The site I worked at most frequently had more than 100 enslaved workers associated with it— 27 people serving the household alone, outnumbering the home's three white residents by a factor of nine. Yet many guests who visited the house and took the tour reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owners.

The first time it happened, I had just finished a tour of the home. People were filing out of their seats, and one man stayed behind to talk to me. He said, "Listen, I just wanted to say that dragging all this slavery stuff up again is bringing down America."

I started to protest, but he interrupted me. "You didn't know. You're young. But America is the greatest country in the world, and these people out there, they'd do anything to make America less great." He was loud and confusing, and I was 22 years old and he seemed like a million feet tall.

Lots of folks who visit historic sites and plantations don't expect to hear too much about slavery while they're there. Their surprise isn't unjustified: Relatively speaking, the move toward inclusive history in museums is fairly recent, and still underway. And as recent debates over Confederate iconography have shown, as a country we're still working through our response to the horrors of slavery, even a century and a half after the end of the Civil War.

Read Margaret Biser’s answers to your questions from her reddit AMA.

The majority of interactions I had with museum guests were positive, and most visitors I encountered weren't as outwardly angry as that man who confronted me early on. (Though some were. One favorite: a 60-ish guy in a black tank top who, annoyed both at having to wait for a tour and at the fact that the next tour focused on slaves, came back at me with, "Yeah, well, Egyptians enslaved the Israelites, so I guess what goes around comes around!")

Still, I'd often meet visitors who had earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery. These folks were usually, but not always, a little older, and almost invariably white. I was often asked if the slaves there got paid, or (less often) whether they had signed up to work there. You could tell from the questions — and, not less importantly, from the body language — that the people asking were genuinely ignorant of this part of the country's history.

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The more overtly negative reactions to hearing about slave history were varied in their levels of subtlety. Sometimes it was as simple as watching a guest's body language go from warm to cold at the mention of slavery in the midst of the historic home tour. I also met guests from all over the country who, by means of suggestive questioning of the "Wouldn't you agree that..." variety, would try to lead me to admit that slavery and slaveholders weren't as bad as they've been made out to be.

On my tours, such moments occurred less frequently if visitors of color were present. Perhaps guests felt more comfortable asking me these questions because I am white, though my African-American coworkers were by no means exempt from such experiences. At any rate, these moments happened often enough that I eventually began writing them down (and, later, tweeting about them).

Taken together, these are the most common misconceptions about American slavery I encountered during my time interpreting history to the public:

1) People think slaveholders "took care" of their slaves out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than out of economic interest

There is a surprisingly prevalent belief out there that slaves' rations and housing were bestowed upon them out of the master's goodwill, rather than handed down as a necessity for their continued labor — and their master's continued profit.

This view was expressed to me often, usually by people asking if the family was "kind" or "benevolent" to their slaves, but at no point was it better encapsulated than by a youngish mom taking the house tour with her 6-year-old daughter a couple of years ago. I had been showing them the inventory to the building, which sets a value on all the high-ticket items in the home, including silver, books, horses, and, of course, actual human people. (Remember that the technical definition of a slave is not just an unpaid worker, but a person considered property.)

For most guests, this is the most emotionally meaningful moment of the tour. I showed the young mother some of the slaves' names and pointed out which people were related to each other. The mom stiffened up, raised her chin, and asked pinchedly, "Did the slaves here appreciate the care they got from their mistress?"

2) People know that field slavery was bad but think household slavery was pretty all right, if not an outright sweet deal

"These were house slaves, so they must have had a pretty all right life, right?" is a phrase I heard again and again. Folks would ask me if members of the enslaved household staff felt "fortunate" that they "got to" sleep in the house or "got to" serve a politically powerful owner.

Relatedly, many guests seemed to think that the only reason to seek liberation from household slavery was if you were being beaten or abused. A large part of the house tours I gave was narratives of men and women who dared to attempt escape from it, and so many museum visitors asked me, in all earnestness and surprise, why those men and women tried to escape: "They lived in a nice house here, and they weren't being beaten. Do we know why they wanted to leave?" These folks were seeing the evil of slavery primarily as a function of the physical environment and the behavior of individual slaveowners, not as inherent to the system itself.

It is worth mentioning that I never, on any tour, said the slaves weren't being beaten -- these visitors simply assumed it. It is also worth mentioning here that the bulk of wanted ads placed in newspapers for fugitive slaves are for house servants, not field workers. Apparently whatever slavery was like in the big house, people were willing to risk their lives to get away from it.

3) People think slavery and poverty are interchangeable

Sometimes in the course of a conversation, guests I spoke with would remark that while being a field slave was indeed difficult, on the whole it was hardly worse than being a humble farmer living off the land. Folks have not always been taught that slavery was much more than just difficult labor: It was violence, assault, family separation, fear.

One important branch of this phenomenon was guests huffily bringing up every disadvantaged group of white people under the sun — the Irish, the Polish, the Jews, indentured servants, regular servants, poor people, white women, Baptists, Catholics, modern-day wage workers, whomever — and say something like, "Well, you know they had it almost as bad as/just as bad as/much worse than slaves did." Within the context of a tour or other interpretation, this behavior had the effect of temporarily pulling sympathy and focus away from African Americans and putting it on whites.

The most extreme example of this occurred in my very last week of work. A gentleman came in to view our replica slave quarter and, upon learning how crowded it was, said, "Well, I've seen taverns where five or six guys had to share a bed!" — thus adding "tavern-goers" to the list of white people who supposedly had it just as bad as slaves.

4) People don't understand how prejudice influenced slaveholders' actions beyond mere economic interest

I was occasionally asked what motivation slaveholders would have had for beating, starving, or otherwise maltreating enslaved workers. This was often phrased as, "If you think about it economically, they don't work as hard if you don't feed 'em!" (The frequent use of the general "you" in this formulation is significant, because it assumes that the archetypal listener is a potential slaveholder —i.e., that the archetypal listener is white.)

Sometimes this question was asked sincerely; at other times the asker was using it to suggest that stories of abuse, suffering, and exploitation under slavery were just outliers or exaggerations.

What this perspective fails to take into account is the racist beliefs that made cruelty to slaves seem ethically permissible. Slaveowners told each other that black workers were stronger than white ones and thus didn't require as much food or rest. They also told each other that black Americans had a higher pain tolerance — literal thick skin — and that therefore physical punishments could be employed with less restraint.

Such beliefs also helped slaveowners feel confident dismissing complaints from enslaved workers as ungrateful whining.

5) People think "loyalty" is a fair term to apply to people held in bondage

One of the few times I actually felt scared of a guest was during a crowded tour a couple of years ago. I was describing a typical dining room service: the table packed with wealthy and influential couples from the surrounding town, and, in the corners of the room, enslaved waiting men watching and serving but unable to speak. The tour was so crowded that not everyone could fit into the room, and a few tourists were listening from the hallway.

As soon as I finished my sentence about the slaves, an expressionless voice behind me intoned, "Were they loyal?" I turned around, and saw a man resting his arms on either side of the door frame behind me, blocking the exit. He looked like he was about to slap me.

I asked him why he would ask that. "They gave 'em food. Gave 'em a place to live," he said. He was just staring into the room, blank in the eyes.

"I think most people would act ‘loyal' to a person who could shoot them for leaving," I said. He and his adult sons keep their arms crossed as they stared at me for the rest of the tour, and I tried to stay toward the middle of the group.

All the misconceptions discussed here serve to prop up one overarching and incorrect belief: that slavery wasn't really all that bad. And if even slavery was supposedly benign, then how bad can the struggles faced by modern day people of color really be?

Why these misconceptions are so prevalent is a fair question. Sometimes guests were just repeating ideas they'd heard in school or from family. They were only somewhat invested in those ideas personally, and they were open to hearing new perspectives (especially when backed up by historical data).

In many other cases, however, justifications of slavery seemed primarily like an attempt by white Americans to avoid feelings of guilt for the past. After all, for many people, beliefs about one's origins reflect one's beliefs about oneself. We don't want our ancestors to have done bad things because we don't want to think of ourselves as being bad people. These slavery apologists were less invested in defending slavery per se than in defending slaveowners, and they weren't defending slaveowners so much as themselves.

Other visitors seemed to find part of their identity in a sense of class victimhood, and they were unwilling to share the sympathy and attention of victimhood with black Americans. As Frank Guan pointed out in the New Republic, explicitness of racism tends to be inversely proportional to social class. Guests who expressed racism most openly to me often appeared to have had recent ancestors who were poor, who were prevented by convention and economics from rising in social status, and who were exploited by the powerful — but who were protected by their whiteness from the extreme oppression visited on African Americans. Regardless of their current wealth level or social status, they still felt that the deck had been stacked against them for generations. Their sense of ancestral victimhood was so personal that the suggestion that any group of people had it worse than their ancestors did was a threat to their sense of self.

And maybe some of these guests were just looking for somewhere to place their anger at their problems, their sense of powerlessness, and their discomfort at social change. They found a scapegoat in black America. I imagine that's what motivated Charleston shooter Dylann Roof, the Unite the Right movement, and others — that feeling of being aggrieved, and wanting someone to blame for it.

Regardless of why they were espoused, all the misconceptions discussed here lead to the same result: the assertion that slavery wasn't really all that bad ("as long as you had a godly master," as one guest put it). And if slavery itself was benign — slavery, a word which in most parlances is a shorthand for unjust hardship and suffering — if even slavery itself was all right, then how bad can the struggles faced by modern-day African Americans really be? Why feel bad for those who complain about racist systems today? The minimization of the unjustness and horror of slavery does more than simply keep the bad feelings of guilt, jealousy, or anger away: It liberates the denier from social responsibility to slaves' descendants.

The question of how to improve this state of affairs is gigantic, and better heads than mine have already said much about it. The tough thing is that racism comes more from the gut than from the mind: You can prove slavery was bad six ways from Sunday, but people can still choose to believe otherwise if they want. Addressing racism isn't just about correcting erroneous beliefs — it's about making people see the humanity in others. We need better education that demonstrates the complexity and dignity of all people; continued efforts from community organizations and faith communities to give justice its due; and better media portraying people of color as people, not caricatures or symbols. Art, public school, faith, entertainment — these are voices that address the subconscious, voices we absorb silently without even noticing. None of these is a complete solution, of course — they are all oblique routes to building compassion.

It's certainly not a bad idea for white Americans to take time to consider the ways in which we may personally have been complicit in oppression, but blame and guilt aren't really the point of telling the histories of enslaved people. The point is to honor those whose tales have not been told.

On the very small scale of leading historic house tours, what helped me combat ahistorical statements was to establish trust and rapport with guests from the get-go. For me, gentleness was key: It created an environment in which people were willing to hear new views and felt less nervous asking questions. For example, guests — especially older folks — used to ask me all the time whether the people who owned the house were "good slaveowners." I would say, "Well, that's an interesting question," and suggest a couple of reasons why even the phrase good slaveowner itself is troubling. They'd nod and look reflective. We were already friends, so they didn't feel attacked by the correction. Then again, maybe they only believed me because they trusted a fellow white person as an unbiased source. And making a personal connection isn't a foolproof way to diffuse racism, as the shooting in Charleston shows: Roof felt so welcomed by the members of Emanuel AME Church that he considered not killing any of them, yet ultimately he went through with his plan.

An older colleague once reminded me to "talk to people, not at them." It's a small piece of advice. But day by day as I was face to face with strangers, challenging their deeply held beliefs on race, it helped.

Margaret Biser gave educational tours and presentations at a historic site for more than six years. Read more stories of her experiences on Twitter @AfAmHistFail.

First Person is Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

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