I think these stories are beautiful but problematic. I see why ppl often believe that Southern AA culture is open to shared diasporic ownership and it is not. Its ubiquity and use as a base for other cultural dialogues makes ppl forget it belongs to a living, breathing ppl. https://twitter.com/mrokra/status/1337381238521421826

I’m not down with the ADOS brigade. However, I find it highly problematic that so much of modern Black diasporic culture — and to be clear, not all— finds its moorings in Southern Blackness, from our radicalism to our food, yet when this is pointed out, ppl get furious.

French ppl have waaaayyyy too many problematic politics — even amongst ppl of color — to be trafficking in Southern Blackness like it’s a shared, dual history that is open and accessible to everyone of African descent. Lol, no.

I get fighting mad when I think how ridiculously stupid it is that New York made Juneteenth a holiday. For what? That is a history that specifically belongs to Black Texans who are descendants of enslaved ppl. That energy would’ve been better spent on a Seneca Village Day

NY could’ve spent the absurd energy making Juneteenth Day into one that actually belongs to them and they need to discuss: the Black community they displaced and destroyed to create Central Park. It would be ridiculous if Dallas or Houston made a Seneca Village Day.

I think we can discuss the ubiquity of a culture without devolving into the supremacy theories that I feel the ADOS Brigade get into, which is an exercise in empire and hegemony, which I am deeply opposed to in a cultural and moral level

It feels very Western and very White frankly, to take another culture, argue to be centered and to demand that you yourself in it, and that it on some level belongs to you. Sometimes in these diasporic conversations when we arguing and demanding ownership and control over +

Histories, practices, etc that traceably originate or were developed as we currently iterate them in places that we are not living descendants of said history or ppl — we are doing the toxic, colonial thing to each other that has been done to us.

It is not necessary to need to see or insert yourself into a history to respect or understand it, or learn from it.

And to be clearer, the issue w/Juneteenth in NY is b/c the North continues to be a culturally hostile place for many Black Southerners, and the contempt yet extraction is an all too common dynamic w/the North and Southern ppl.