A testimony that refused the terms of our degradation

June 18, 2020 6:52 AM

Princeton professor Imani Perry writes to remind us: Racism is terrible. Blackness is not.

American racism is unquestionably rapacious. To identify the achievement and exhilaration in black life is not to mute or minimize racism, but to shame racism, to damn it to hell. The masters were wrong in the antebellum South, when they described the body-shaking, delighted chuckle of an enslaved person as simplemindedness. No, that laugh—like our music, like our language, like our movement—was a testimony that refused the terms of our degradation. In the footage of the protests over the past several weeks, we have seen black people dancing, chanting, singing. Do not misunderstand. This is not an absence of grief or rage, or a distraction. It is insistence.

posted by eirias (2 comments total)

Good post
posted by ScienceFeed at 7:35 AM on June 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this.
posted by slidell at 7:18 AM on June 20, 2020