“Mississippi Masala asks: What might it mean to forge a politics explicitly based on an investment in the places where we are, rather than in an imagined ideal of the places from which we came?”

Good day to reread this lovely essay by @durba.bsky.social

www.publicbooks.org/mississippi-...

What does freedom mean to a nation built on slavery that continues to run on the same forced labor and exploitation that emancipation never truly abolished? #FourthOfJuly
(open.substack.com/pub/rosecolo...)

There is a looong history of the white supremacist practice of “gator baiting” wherein Black children, most often nude toddlers or adolescent boys, were illustrated or posed next to alligators (if not directly in their jaws) while white “hunters” aimed to shoot. #AlligatorAlcatraz

Segregationists and white supremacists blaming the tragedy of #Flight5343 on DEI, when Black folks were among the victims, comes from the same strange fruit that allowed pro-slavery patriarchs and sexist suffragettes to vilify the civil rights movement + juxtapose Black freedom with white oppression