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Phillip Winn

@I_Choose_Exile@mastodon.social Exile has switched servers since I composed that list, my bad!

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Phillip Winn

Mastodon isn't going to push people or posts at you or try to guess what you might like to see, so it's up to you to follow many different people and boost many different posts. One thing that helps with that is !

During Black History Month, I'm suggesting Black people, whether they post mostly about Black History Month or not. Some post mostly about music, or nerd stuff.

@seanalan Sean Gonsalves
@venitamathias Venita
@Shells@mastodon.world Michele
@Deglassco D. Elisabeth Glassco
@Maggie Maggie

I think I missed a post earlier this week, so instead of a Friday Five to Follow, I'll give you ten accounts:

@TlanetteRoget BovaryCee
@JMadFour Jay Madison
@KFuentesGeorge Prof Kemi FG
@I_Choose_Exile@mstdn.social Exile
@anxiousrage Abeni

If you're wypipo like me, a more diverse timeline is a Good Thing™, and having control of your Home feed is also a Good Thing™, so take advantage of it!

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Phillip Winn

It's Friday! An R. Kelly song comes to mind, but we won't talk about that. Instead, let's celebrate Black History Month at the Tiny Desk!

There's an official playlist I'll link below, but it's short, so I'll start with some of my favorite Tiny Desk concerts. Like most people eight years ago, I mostly knew T-Pain as one of the first to really push Auto-Tune to the limit. So this Tiny Desk concert was a revelation.

youtu.be/CIjXUg1s5gc

He demonstrates clearly that he never needed Auto-Tune, not even a little bit. It was always all about style.

Another favorite of mine from six years ago was Anderson .Paak. How he manages to play the drums perfectly while singing is amazing to me.

youtu.be/ferZnZ0_rSM

Both of those videos start with an "explicit language" warning, so listen at your own risk.

The official NPR playlist seems to include only concerts released during February, and it's growing this month! Lady Wray and Lee Fields have both been added for 2023, and the playlist should keep growing.

Celebrating Black History Month At The Tiny Desk
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2

Lee Fields is a very worthy addition, in my opinion. Great stuff!

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Phillip Winn boosted
The Way of Accountability

"Embrace the color, embrace the chaos, embrace the joy." #blackart #blackanime #afrofuturism #aiart #blackjoy #blackhistory #blackmastodon #blackfediverse #blackfriday

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Phillip Winn boosted
Dendan Setia (Nins)

Whoa, this is interesting to learn, as a non-American #BlackFriday #USA #History

"Most people are familiar with the 1863 popular version of Sojourner Truth's famous, “Ain’t I a woman” speech but they have no idea that this [...] is vastly different from Sojourner’s original 1851 speech. [...]

"The popular but inaccurate version was written and published in 1863 [...] by a white abolitionist named Frances Dana Barker Gage. [...] chose to represent Sojourner speaking in a stereotypical 'southern black slave accent', rather than in Sojourner’s distinct upper New York State low-Dutch accent. [...]

"By changing Truth's words and her dialect to that of a stereotypical southern slave, Frances Gage effectively erased Sojourner’s Dutch heritage and her authentic voice. As well as unintentionally adding to the oversimplification of the American slave culture and furthering the eradication of our nations Northern slave history."

thesojournertruthproject.com/?

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Phillip Winn

I started this Black History Month with a plan to posting something every day about Black History, and boost Black people doing the same. After all, I went through what I once called an "awakening" as an adult, but since "woke" is now a word that means "anything Republicans don't like," I guess I'd say my eyes were opened, instead. If I can help other wypipo open their eyes, that's good, right? And most of us could use a reminder of things we already know, which is why we have annual events like birthdays and Black History Month.

Boosting is easy. Mastodon depends on people boosting posts, and I follow a lot of Black people already, and I've started following more this month. My list of follows has a lot of nerdy people, since I'm heavily into myself, but also writers and teachers and just people living their lives.

I'm not sure how well the "Black History for wypipo" approach is going, to be honest. Every day I post things I think are interesting or educational, and shortly before or after that, I witness a masterclass in How to Do It from @mekkaokereke, who was previously on my list as a nerd, but it turns out is so, so much more.

I don't want to center this on myself, which is why I'm avoiding talking much about my own history of learning Black History. I took an embarrassingly long time to learn what I should have learned in elementary school, and I think many other wypipo could say the same. I've read a lot of books, and I have some *very* patient and well-educated Black friends who haven't pointed and laughed like they had every right to do, but have instead patiently recommended more books and pointed out areas of my staggering ignorance. In our modern age, it's amazing what you can learn for free online, and there are books on almost everything that can be delivered right to your door!

So maybe I'll recommend some books I've enjoyed, but I'm just a wypipo who has read some books. I hope others might chime in with books they recommend, and then I won't have to talk too much about many times I've bought Michelle Alexander's *The New Jim Crow*, because I keep loaning it out and not getting it back!

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Phillip Winn

Crash Course: Black American History, with Clint Smith
youtu.be/xPx5aRuWCtc

This is a series I like so much, I linked it in my bio for Black History Month. Clint Smith takes us through 51 videos, each in the neighborhood of ten minutes, all in Crash Course style.

The six-minute video above is an introduction and overview, with the other 51 episodes in a playlist.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8d

The presenter also wrote a book, which you can order in your choice of formats here: bookshop.org/p/books/how-the-w

On a recommendation from a friend, I've ordered another book, *Slavery's Constitution* by David Waldstreicher. I expect to have something to say about that one when I've finished it.

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Phillip Winn boosted
mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.

Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*

#BlackMastodon

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Phillip Winn boosted
Prof Kemi FG

The same thing. Black people get nonstop lectures about "pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps" and "you should be looking for a hand up, not a handout," but when we actually succeed, we get targeted by the white power structure for getting too "uppity."

#BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #racism

theroot.com/white-neighbors-tr

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Phillip Winn boosted
Phillip Winn

@Jaden2@mstdn.social I go back and forth on this.

YES! Black history *is* American history, and American history is Black history. No doubt about that! Anybody teaching a history course should look long and hard to include Black people if possible, since they've been whitewashed out of most places they belong.

So in that sense, we should all be exposed to Black history as often as we're exposed to any history at all, which is very often for students, and not often enough for adults living their post-school lives.

But I sometimes think of it like birthdays. You're a person every day. You reflect the hopes and dreams of the people around you, and the love and care of your family and friends 24/7/365, right? You life matters *every* day, not just one day. But still, one day out of each year, it's worth taking stock of the passage of time. It's worth celebrating your life in a special way, with cake! Which doesn't mean your life doesn't matter the other 364 days of the year.

So all of American history is Black history. But I think it's still good to take one month out of twelve to remind people that Black lives have ALWAYS mattered, and that we wouldn't be where we are today without the contributions of Black people to this country, and we'd be in a better place if we'd not spent so much effort trying to keep Black people down.

Does that make sense?

All months should include Black history, but also, Black History Month is a Good Thing™.

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Phillip Winn boosted
Steve Streza

2000-2005: Blogs are great and so are comments!
2005-2010: Blogs are still great but comments are not.
2010-Present: What if we didn't have blogs but just had a website full of nothing but comments?

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Phillip Winn boosted
Rod Faulkner

"During World War I and World War II, the fear of combat-trained African American soldiers returning from deployment overseas to Jim Crow and segregation in the United States so threatened white supremacy, these soldiers were often made the specific targets of racially-motivated, violent attacks."

medium.com/an-injustice/in-ser

#BlackHistoryMonth2023 #BlackHistory365 #BlackHistory #BlackMastodon #BlackFedi #BlackFediverse

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Phillip Winn

In 1923, the New York Times Magazine published an article about one exception to the then-current prohibition against alcohol sales: foreign embassies.

Charge of the Little Embassies at Washington
sundaymagazine.org/2023/02/05/

Of course, the location of most of these foreign embassies (Washington D.C.) means that the politicians responsible for prohibition were not themselves without access to alcohol. Some things don't seem to change.

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Phillip Winn boosted
Abeni

Rosa Parks wasn’t the first person to take a stand with the Montgomery Bus Line.

Nine months earlier, 15 year old high school student Claudette Colvin refused to give her seat to a white rider. She became a co-defendant on the Browder v. Gayle civil suit which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1956 they ruled that racially-segregated seating on public buses in Alabama was unconstitutional.

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Phillip Winn

If you have only a few minutes each day, read whatever @mekkaokereke has posted for the day. But if you have more time, much more time, perhaps you'll enjoy some:

Black History Audiobooks
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnk

The 21 videos in this playlist include some very short speeches by Lincoln and Wilberforce, but also some multi-hour audiobooks.

After reading Mekka all this month, I find myself wondering about the selection of authors and subjects. A "Black History Audiobooks" playlist that includes multiple speeches by Abraham Lincoln and one by William Wilberforce? Whether you accept the description of Lincoln as a white supremacist or not, it's a little weird to have three out of 21 videos be speeches by white people, right? And then the story of young (white) Abraham Lincoln? I could go on, but there are some good books on the list, so I'll stop. It's not my place.

Enjoy writings from Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, and books about the Underground Railroad, the American Revolution, and exploration of the North Pole.

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Phillip Winn boosted
mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth

Still haven't made it to Black history yet. I'm still working through white US history.

Q: Why do so many Black people refuse to sing the US national anthem? I'm sorry, but that seems unpatriotic to me. Plus, the Whitney Houston version is amazing! Why don't you like Whitney Houston? Whitney!

A: Because more Black folk know the true history of the anthem, and some can't get past the racism.

hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109

#BlackMastodon

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Phillip Winn boosted
CellyBlue

You can hide history. Not teach history. But. It will always be with us. The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government.

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Phillip Winn boosted
zhivi

Have you heard of Adella Hunt Logan? Because she has Caucasian ancestry on her maternal side, Adella’s light skin often allowed her to pass as white. Born during the Civil War and growing up in the Jim Crow south, Hunt Logan learned to use this as an advantage. More in the comments.
#BlackMastodon #BlackTwitter @BlackMastodon
#BlackFediverse #BlackFedi
#BlackAcademics #BlackDiaspora #BIPoc #black #blacklivesmatter #DiversityEquityInclusion #dei #mastodon #racism #antiracist #history

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Phillip Winn boosted
Sheril Kirshenbaum

Born in 1852, Mary Titcomb had a strong desire for an education & career.

Mary became a librarian & making #books accessible to everyone was a priority. She came up with a children’s room & set up “book stations” in shops & post offices in town.

But Mary noticed people from rural areas weren’t visiting the #library. So, she secured funding to build & begin the nation’s first bookmobile. 📚

amazon.com.au/Library-Wheels-T #history

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Phillip Winn boosted
mekka okereke :verified:

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

Not ready to talk about Black History. Still talking about white US history.

Q: Why are Black neighborhoods so often high crime neighborhoods? Must be a lawless people! Violent! Thieves! Predators!

A: There is no such thing as a "high crime neighborhood." The whole concept is entirely made up based on our notion of what we consider a crime.

You may be thinking:🤔 Wait... What?! Not true! A high crime neighborhood has more drug use and sales, theft, and even murder!

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