That's what you call the "You Gone Learn Today" speech

January 18, 2022 7:06 AM

Nikole Hannah-Jones (previously), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the The 1619 Project, was invited to give a speech about Dr. King, only to have a small number of members of the group hosting her claiming that her presence "dishonored" the Civil Rights icon. "So," Jones tweeted, "I scrapped my original speech and spent the entire first half of it reading excerpts from a bunch of Dr. King's speeches, but without telling anyone that I was doing so, leading the audience to think King's words were mine. And, whew, chile, it was AMAZING." Twitter thread starts here.
posted by DirtyOldTown (33 comments total)

Is there a threadreader link to the twitter thread, by chance?
posted by eviemath at 7:15 AM on January 18, 2022

Threadreader.

I sat down and read the 1619 Project book when it was published recently. It's terrific. I mean I'm politically inclined that way anyway, but I was really impressed by such a clear and careful work of scholarship. The idea the book is "discredited" is racist nonsense. (At worst a few small interpretations of people's motives may be slightly skewed in one direction, a reasonable counterbalance to decades of racist and skewed interpretations for decades. And those bits open to interpretation are less than 1% of the text.) The references and bibliography for the book are amazing and airtight. Also nice to read an unvarnished depiction of the horrors of slavery for once. It reminded me a bit of how the Germans write about the Holocaust, the forthright intent of getting the record correct and letting the facts speak for themselves.
posted by Nelson at 7:18 AM on January 18, 2022 [29 favorites]

At some point, I realized that what I had been taught in school and by the media was basically this: yes, some bad things continued after slavery, but Dr. King gave a speech and then we passed some laws and now there is no more racism. There's even a passage or two in the Dream speech (like the "content of their character") that flatters the "I don't even see race! I'm color-blind!" set, and the whole thing is pretty comforting to white folks. Not much (I mean, no) coverage of King's opposition to the Vietnam War or of his increasing focus on social and economic justice.
posted by thelonius at 7:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [33 favorites]

Aw I wish we'd gotten some information about the reaction (or, indeed, the original objections). Don't get me wrong, I love NH-J, and it's a cool idea to twist what might have been a regular speech. But the way she started telling this story led me to expect an actual reaction shot or two, at least. She set it up like it was going to be the tale of a delicious showdown. Just saying the audience was "shook" is not enough to keep that promise. I feel cheated, like I read a piece of clickbait. The setup does a disservice to how cool the speech was!
posted by MiraK at 7:29 AM on January 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

The surest sign that someone does not know who NHJ is is when they think it is a good idea to pick a fight with NHJ.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:32 AM on January 18, 2022 [41 favorites]

Trolling level: UTTERLY FUCKING LEGENDARY.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:23 AM on January 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

Yeah, I would have liked some info on the group and the objections, but that might mean burning bridges she'd prefer unburned, and the speech is worth reading on it's own.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:08 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's really it, yeah. She has said that her actual hosts were gracious and she doesn't want to have this reflect unfairly on them.

It really doesn't take much to imagine how people who referred to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Hannah-Jones as a "disgraced activist" who "dishonors the legacy of MLK" would have reacted to this speech, though. I mean... we all know.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:11 AM on January 18, 2022 [18 favorites]

Oh, and don't miss that Boston Review article she links, too. A real eye opener on Reagan's use of political theatre.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:20 AM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I also felt like it was headed toward a "delicious showdown" kind of resolution and felt a bit let down at the end, but thinking it over, I don't trust my own desire to have the narrative end in such a neat way, with the "bad guys" getting their comeuppance and me, the reader, feeling as though good has been done. That's the way these stories usually go: someone gives a powerful speech and then racism is solved! It's the mainstream MLK narrative, as thelonius points out.

For me, there's two aspects to that expectation that are interesting. One is that, even though we know it's unrealistic, a lifetime of being exposed to this story of the "hero" activist leaves a feeling of disappointment when the tropes aren't fulfilled. And that disappointment can become directed at activists themselves for not "fixing the problem" quickly enough. I see this so often online (ok on twitter), eg "AOC is a hypocrite because she hasn't solved capitalism yet."

The other is, and I don't know if I can put this clearly, but as I was reading the thread I felt in myself an uncomfortable duality: recognizing the truth of, for example, "the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the BLACK for their freedom..." while also having the knowledge that half a century on our society still is struggling with those truths. Just a tiny bit, I could feel a sympathy to those members who opposed NHJ's speech, because they valorize King but do not engage with the depth of his thought and activism. And I wanted that discomfort, small though it was, to end; I wanted that satisfying conclusion where a Lesson Was Learned, after-school-special style.
posted by radiogreentea at 9:35 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

She left the audience with this and it is enough of an ending for me because I have to think it eats at the exact right people in the exact right way:

People who oppose today what he stood for back then do not get to be the arbiters of his legacy. The real Dr. King cannot be commodified, homogenized, and white-washed and whatever side you stand on TODAY is the side you would have been back then.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:45 AM on January 18, 2022 [26 favorites]

Rarely has the word “outsmarted” been so literally demonstrated.
posted by scratch at 9:47 AM on January 18, 2022 [9 favorites]

NHJ is amazing as always. I'm reminded of the time a few years ago that NPR started tweeting quotes from the Declaration of Independence, only to have a lot of Trumpies accuse them of sedition.

This speech takes that energy and dials it up to eleven.
posted by basalganglia at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2022 [14 favorites]

Never underestimate just how evil Reagan was. Made Nixon look like a Boy Scout.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:58 AM on January 18, 2022 [21 favorites]

As someone I'm misquoting said on Twitter yesterday, America's favourite way to celebrate Dr. King's work is by putting weird ellipses in the middle of his quotations. If you haven't, consider reading Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech in full and reflect on why the only part you ever see quoted is that uplifting three paragraphs near the end. As well, his Letter From A Birmingham Jail is also among the most important and powerful political writing of the last century.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

posted by mhoye at 10:17 AM on January 18, 2022 [26 favorites]

M. Hanna-Jones is a goddamn American hero. Without her efforts to help make us better, we are worse. The white supremacists, modern klansmen, american nazis, and nationalist grifters do NOT get to define her or her work. I wish I was 10% the human being she is - and our job is to make sure she, and heroes like her, are supported to the best of our abilities (although really, she doesn't seem to need it to be amazing). Ps, 1619 and Ibram X Kendi's Four Hundred Souls, are so enlightening that everyone living in this country should have them both as required reading.
posted by WatTylerJr at 10:40 AM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I have long felt like Nixon was the John the Baptist, the midwife, the precursor, who set the stage for Reagan to take. A lot of things that Reagan took to the hilt had a start with Nixon (first declared War on Drugs for example). I don't think Reagan was ever going to be a good president but the bed Nixon made for him enabled a lot of harm. ugh.
posted by supermedusa at 10:43 AM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

For me, there's two aspects to that expectation that are interesting.

Well, no. The problem, as noted by others above, is that she herself created that expectation in her framing of the story. It's just odd to start off with, "Hey, listen to what I just did, you won't BELIEVE how people reacted" and not comment on the reactions.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:56 AM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

comparing the relative badness of dead presidents is pure armchair commentary, it's like we can't help ourselves.. for what it's worth, I take a quick look at these dead men and I can't help but feel Reagan is the worst scoundrel of the two. saying Nixon made Reagan's bed is another way of saying Nixon came before Reagan, I guess it's trivially true in that sense. as to this article: great, thanks for posting. We don't always get these moments of clarity in rhetoric, it's a gift.
posted by elkevelvet at 11:00 AM on January 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's an excellent 2018 documentary called King in the Wilderness about the last 2 years of MLK's life that really gets to the heart of just how alone, despairing and abandonded MLK was after shifting his activism from Southern racism to Northern poverty and Vietnam. It's available in full on Youtube and on HBO.

I knew almost nothing about those years, and about how widely disliked MLK had become by the end of his life. The documentary is a real eye-opener, and I can't recommend it enough for folks who mostly know King's history from the 50s and early 60s.
posted by mediareport at 11:53 AM on January 18, 2022 [15 favorites]

> ... desire to have the narrative end in such a neat way, with the "bad guys" getting their comeuppance and me, the reader, feeling as though good has been done. That's the way these stories usually go: someone gives a powerful speech and then racism is solved! It's the mainstream MLK narrative, as thelonius points out.

Oh no, perhaps my comment earlier was misunderstood. I am referring specifically to this tweet:

So, I scrapped my original speech and spent the entire first half of it reading excerpts from a bunch of Dr. King's speeches, but without telling anyone that I was doing so, leading the audience to think King's words were mine. And, whew, chile, it was AMAZING.

and then this later tweet in the same thread:

Oh, the uncomfortable silence as I read Dr. King's words at a commemoration of Dr. King's life when people had no idea that these were his words. When I revealed that everything I said to that point was taken from his speeches between '56 and 67... Can you say SHOOK!

I was led to expect at least *some* supporting evidence for the underlined parts. Unfortunately, she gives us none. For all we know, the audience was fully aware that she was quoting Dr. King right from the start. This is why I felt cheated, like I'd read a piece of clickbait.

My disappointment has nothing to do with expecting tropes to be fulfilled. I would have been perfectly thrilled to read just her speech without her embellishments about the (imagined?) ignorance of her audience and how she (supposedly) tricked them and shook them. Her speech is pretty great on its own. We didn't need the unsubstantiated hype talk accompanying it, which imo did a disservice to how good her speech was.
posted by MiraK at 12:13 PM on January 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'm bothered at the implication that NHJ would owe us supporting evidence related to the foreknowledge and reactions of her audience. My read on this was that she included her experience of the events with the telling of them.

Really, was she supposed to degrade her professionalism by naming someone specific, describing which muscles in their face did or did not move, and then inferring their emotions for us?

What may be interpreted as unnecessary embellishment by some is, to at least me, a woman talking about her experience of the events of a day, exuberantly and triumphantly. Sometimes people's twitter feeds get to be for their own stories.

I don't see any reason for doubt.
posted by droomoord at 1:44 PM on January 18, 2022 [7 favorites]

Yeah, I didn't feel like there was anything lacking in her descriptions of the audience's reaction or any reason to think she embellished. She was there, looking at them, and able to see with her own eyes that they were uncomfortable and shook.
posted by Mavri at 1:48 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Metafilter: you gone overthink this
posted by Nelson at 1:50 PM on January 18, 2022 [12 favorites]

MiraK, I would not necessarily disagree with you if you were talking about a professionally published article with a clickbait title, but ... you are talking about a Twitter thread.

You are calling a Twitter thread by a Black activist describing their experiences giving a talk "clickbait" because it doesn't contain enough emotional payoff for you or "evidence" that those experiences are real.

It's a Twitter thread.

Was she supposed to secretly film her audience to provide evidence so that she would be allowed to talk about the experience publicly later.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 2:27 PM on January 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Oh, no, not at all, I'm sorry that this minor annoyance I felt, which I assumed would be a passing comment, has derailed a thread about an awesome speech. Please ignore my finicky, pedantic nonsense.
posted by MiraK at 2:29 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

No need to feel bad, MiraK. Finicky & pedantic is our brand here. In fact...

Metafilter: please ignore our finicky, pedantic nonsense.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:44 PM on January 18, 2022 [12 favorites]

The most vocal negative response to the 1619 Project has been to assert shoddy scholarship by politically motivated activists rather than engage with it on the issues. Because, of course, engaging means realizing pretty quickly the points of contention are not whether America was racist, but nit picking about the extent of that racism. So a bunch of tyros who think they are experts because they watched that Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War once just need them to go away.

There was a paper on the blue recently about dismissive incomprehension. The authors don't mean feigning ignorance, but trying to undermine someone by calling what they're saying nonsensical gibberish. It can be difficult to counter, the paper observes, because the point is assert the speaker lacks the intelligence, expertise, credentials, etc. to be worth listening to, so any response can also be ignored.

Which is why I think this response is so brilliant. You need some veneer of authority to pull the dismissive incomprehension gambit, and it makes it obvious that these bozos never even did the basic reading--even when they pick the topic (in this case, MLK).
posted by mark k at 6:02 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

NHJ is one of those people who make me PROUD of my alma mater. Normally people from there are running around being heinously embarrassing in public in ways that make you have to explain that, no, you actually can get a university education there, prominent faculty notwithstanding (*coughAmyConeyBarrettcough*). Nikole Hannah-Jones makes every single one of us look smarter by association!

I have said it before and I will say it again: "But Nikole Hannah-Jones is not the product of a university education steeped in critical theory; she is the product of exactly what cancel-culture conservatives on Fox News are always claiming they want: An education focused on the history of Western thought and the "classical" great Western thinkers, with Christianity and religion front and center throughout the whole thing. If the 1619 Project is the result of its creator's university education, then it comes from Plato and the Bible and Milton and Great Books courses."

And honestly, please make this point, over and over again. When you give an intelligent, thoughtful person who cares about justice and who cares about the American project a classical Christian education, you get Nikole Hannah-Jones. This is the outcome of a top-notch, intellectually-rigorous classical education focused on Great Books and the great Western thinkers, filtered through an American Christian lens, with a mandatory theological point of view. She is literally the end product of what Christian dominionists claim they want from American education. (Of course that is NOT actually what they want -- they want to remove all the intellectual rigor.) You give a student the Great Books, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas (a little Tommy Quine Quine, as Eleanor would say), and put them in a modern American milieu, and Nikole Hannah-Jones is the obvious outcome. (And we are so fuckin' proud of her for it!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:48 PM on January 18, 2022 [23 favorites]

My annoyance is greater than MiraK's. I want Hannah-Jones' speech on YouTube, not only because I want to see the annoyed reactions of the audience, but also because I want to link to it and thereby intellectually sucker-punch some normies.
posted by Rat Spatula at 9:02 PM on January 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I admit I was also hoping for details on what "shook" and "amazing" looked and sounded like. I never had a moment's doubt that the audience was indeed as shook and amazed as she said; it just would have been even more satisfying than it already is to know how those reactions were expressed.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:56 PM on January 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Her MLK quote that "[America] madly practices the antithesis of democracy" is, heartbreakingly, more potent and accurate than ever.
posted by riverlife at 10:08 PM on January 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

Here's a local news report about the speech that identifies the host, as well as including a response from its president.
posted by carrienation at 2:42 PM on January 19, 2022 [3 favorites]