(also practicing not panicking about minor typos)

(I am extremely not saying anything new here, just practicing having thoughts out loud.)

How the past is presented to us shapes how we see the now and the future. Framing things as individual tragedies/triumphs reinforces the American idea of individualism+ exceptionality...removing the larger context and preventing people from seeing the institutional constructs that put/keep us here.

This is possibly boring and theoretically well known. I'm nobody over here, but I don't think it's as well known/recognized/understood as it could be.

And this serves to make the civil rights movement seem distant, past, a battle already fought and "won"-- MLK was assassinated in 1968. 57 years ago.

I don't really have anything smart to add here, other than I also think a lot about the fact that every year on MLK day, we see black and white pictures of King and the marches, when color photos exist and we are well past the need to print in B&W for cost or other reasons.

when in reality the best examples of what we're dealing with now are in our own country's past and present (Jim Crow, segregation, slavery, genocide).

Yes, concerned and othered.