Of course I want to do something special, but bear with me a little. My laptop decided to die on me yesterday so, no drawings coming soon until I fix it.
“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”
Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.
I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance
please try this on for size:
there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present
My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument. Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM. The message is that it is BAD.
My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.
Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary. And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to participate in this system. If that means I go to Hell, so be it. Going to Hell now.”
(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature. Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too. Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.” Interesting guy. Sorry for the long parenthetical.)
Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.
And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.
people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice
i have just witnessed the most viscerally, emotionally, cathartically satisfying murder-
So happy to see a message about the importance of nuance in this site.
There some things, stories, people, that you can’t cut the bad out of because if you do they won’t stand on their own. You have to carry the whole body with you into the future, even if you only love part of it.
This is a late happy birthday gift to @codename-bewareofthefangirl<3 I was inspired by your Karasuno first years one-shots and I love everything you write!
I hope you like this sweet kids as third years <3
so yeah, I noticed how the first years resemble night sky stuff, Hinata is the sun, Yachi is the stars, Yamaguchi is the constellations (or more stars! for his freckles), Tsukki is the fireflies, and Kags is the moon (or Tsukki, but I remember Tobio playing as the moon in elementary school)
i think social media not only has eroded ideas of privacy (”if you have nothing to hide why do you care?”), but in a much more harmful way it promotes the notion that there should be no difference between public thoughts and private behaviour. But this is totally bogus because people behave differently according to different situations, and this isn’t being “fake”, it’s just what navigating social situations in a proficient manner is like.
The way I behave with my friends and my family, the way I behave in private, is not for public consumption. Nor should it be. Publicness is a matter of choice, it shouldn’t be mandatory. People are not entitled to anyone’s private thoughts on anything. People have a right to decide what they wish to show in public and what they wish to hide.
fuck yeahhh
social media has irrevocably changed our perception of public/private lives, and with it, our perception of boundaries both personal and public.
i use social media minimally, primarily as a content consumer, not as a content creator, but even so, i have become increasingly aware of the inescapable and uncontrollable nature of it. in a sea of billions i am no one, and yet, i am not unseen.
our real life communities range from a few dozens to a few hundreds, the people we see day to day in the course of work, school, social gatherings, and family events. i am known to these people. i am seen. and with social media, i am shared.
aspects of my life that would have struggled to appear in a rumor mill a few decades ago are now readily available for consumption on the socials of my family, friends, and community. a photo here. a video there. a text post. a tag.
we live in a world where our every waking moment could be broadcast to an audience at anytime without our knowledge, intentionally or accidentally.
an ex angling for an incriminating shot. a stranger filming a tiktok who happens to catch you doing dumb/funny/incriminating shit. an unflattering photo at your cousin’s wedding. a school project made for a grade and passed around the community facebook for laughs.
nothing is sacred. nothing is private.
we are, increasingly, a society of voyeurs.
the good news, is that we don’t have to be. we cannot control what the people around us do, but we can unplug from the vicious cycle.
we don’t have to share content containing others without their consent.
we can choose to advocate for our right not to be shared without our consent.
we can set boundaries about what we are and are not comfortable sharing with the public.
we can cut people out of our lives who refuse to respect our boundaries. you are not a content mine. you are a person and you deserve privacy and respect.
demand that respect for yourself, and advocate for that respect to be given to others.
and lastly, don’t forget to cultivate that private life. this isn’t a movie. your life is what you make it, not what you post about it.
