Saw a discussion on this earlier and thought it sounded good!

[media=https://youtu.be/7LfDYEm7bgU]

They were discussing this morning about how a black version of anything they were excluded from came to be as a form of resisting oppression. I grew up far removed from people who didn’t look like me and really still live in a white majority area, so it was pretty fascinating for me to learn about these things that never came up where I was at. It engenders complex feelings - it’s a sad sort of nonsense that made it necessary to my thinking, but it’s impressive and joyful in its conception and what it offered. A safe harbor of freedom and humanity against a storm. I get what the woman is saying in this trailer about how that closeness and strength can be lost with integration, but it puts me in mind of what I’ve observed when I have been places that were more diverse - integration really only seems to go so far. I think regardless of what a divide is, be it the color of skin, the culture, religion, class, sometimes even gender, humans are always most comfortable with those they share their experience with aside from those times magic happens and we just find a soul we recognize underneath all that other stuff. So I can see maybe a dilution of sorts when a completely parallel society is no longer required, but I don’t think that community, the safe harbor of that shared experience can ever be truly stamped out. I dunno. I just like what makes me think about things. 🤷‍♀️

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bijouxbroussard · F

Thank you so much for posting about this. I can hardly wait to watch this series, both because I adore the host and because it’s great information that everyone should learn.

Sadly, there are now generations of black people who don’t know about anything involving black people that isn’t about “the hood” or other stereotypes. There was and is a middle class with various community institutions, social groups and even colleges available to blacks from the days when doors of the mainstream equivalents were legally closed to us.

JustNik · 51-55, F

@bijouxbroussard You’re welcome! 😄 I wonder if that’s what the woman is referring to about things being lost with integration. Young people not knowing this history. He did say in the interview this morning that so much of what was done was started essentially anonymously, though, just someone seeing a need and sowing the seed basically, so it might have been a harder chapter to keep alive from that perspective regardless. I just love these things where they take one piece of the pie and really discuss it. Fills in holes a bit at a time. I watched that US and Holocaust documentary too which really covers WWII from the Jewish perspective and there was so much there I’d had no idea about.

MistyCee

Please don't take this wrong, because I'm still watching the video while I type this, but your "wall of text" with no paragraphs makes it really hard to see what I'm looking at or where you're going.

PS, I finished, and I kind of feel like what you're expressing is maybe a half finished thought, much like how I feel about Gates' stuff on PBS.

There's nothing wrong about that, mind you, and I think there's a lot to be said for opening dialogue without too strong of a point, but at the same time, i kind of think it's less effective and attention grabbing than presenting something really controversial.

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MistyCee

@JustNik Yup, I've seen good ancestry stuff mostly, where he gets celebrites and surprises them by what research can tell them about their ancestors, which usually includes black ancestors for the white celebs and white ones for the black celebs, but also some interesting non racial surprises.

It's mostly a feel good, we're all human rather than saints or angels. I think I've seen him so some "harder" pieces, but thats what sticks in my mind most.

I also think I saw some kind of major network knockoff on another network and it reminded me of Pat Boone covering Fats Domino, but I didn't watch it for long.

JustNik · 51-55, F

@MistyCee oh yes I’ve seen that ancestry one advertised and thought it sounded neat but I haven’t seen any yet. It seems sensible that by now none of us should be surprised to find we’re a little bit of a lot of things, but details would always be interesting.

bijouxbroussard · F

@MistyCee I’ve rarely seen black ancestors for the white celebrities (though it has happened, one white journalist who was featured discovered that she was related to the host). What seems to happens more often is that some white celebrities discover they have slaveowners among their ancestors, and they have to deal emotionally with being descendants of that experience.

The hardest, where celebrities often cry, is discussing their ancestors who were slaves, learning the particulars of that, or where they lost family members during the Holocaust.
In the former the details were mostly unknown, in the latter, rarely discussed by older family members.

calicuz · 56-60, M

Judging just by the trailer, I don't see this as an overall positive.
It's all good and well for anyone to embrace their culture., the problem is this "Black Culture " or the "Ghetto Lifestyle" wasn't created by them, it was created in the media, television and film.
This culture was projected onto them to keep them separated and downtrodden.

JustNik · 51-55, F

@calicuz that’s interesting. From my distant perspective, I was thinking more along the lines of the forced separation creating a unique culture, although I can see where a lot of aspects have been exaggerated to make them seem less relatable. Is that what you mean? Like what we think of as the black culture isn’t really what it is, but just what has been fabricated for us?

calicuz · 56-60, M

@JustNik

Yes, that's what I mean.
It's more of a glamorization of what is a poor lifestyle.

JustNik · 51-55, F

@calicuz that’s a good point to keep front and center really. Thanks for bringing it up. 🙂

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