Antiblackness takes many forms, one of which is to affect a pose of intellectualism, objective, disinterested rationality,appreciation for intellectual nuance, and contrarianism. You find this on the right, among “intellectual dark web” sorts of people. You can also find it on the left, among Marxist intellectuals. Rob Urie’s recent article Identity, Race, and Electoral Politics…
Eric Fombonne is some guy who published an editorial in a psychiatry journal, taking issue with the concept of “camouflaging” in autism research. It came to my attention because Spectrum News published an interview that gave him a platform to expound on the same views. In short, Fombonne is a demonstration of why autism research…
I guess Dylan Scott is what happens when you ask liberal white men to write about race and politics. About two weeks ago, of all the things he could’ve written about, he chose to write a long article about Kanye West running for president. “Is he for real?”, the article starts, because how black people…
Tim Alberta is officially a smart person. This is his biography from Politico: Tim Alberta is chief political correspondent for POLITICO where his longer form work is often published in the publication’s magazine. Tim is widely recognized as one of the most skilled political reporters of his generation, covering a range of topics, including: The…
For context, see the previous post about the first two chapters of Scenes of Subjection. This will be a discussion of the third, which is about “seduction” as a justification for rape. The overall theme of the book is how ideas of black agency and humanity have been perversely used against black people. Chapter 3…
I couldn’t recommend actually reading Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. It has very interesting things to say, but it says them in the language of 1990s critical theory, a(n) (ab)use of the English language. It’s the kind of book where a whole paragraph might be rhetorical questions…
I don’t especially disagree with what Trevor Noah says here, but I think he’s missing something important: Trevor Noah’s analysis can’t explain the existence of this tweet: “Dawg how did I get banned from r/Blackpeopletwitter just for calling Obama a war criminal. That’s how I know the moderators are light skinned.” Edward Byron Reuter was…