When blue check marks and white nationalists collide with reality, ignorance wins.
OK, what American here has never heard of Emmett Till? In the circles I travel in, everyone knows who he was. If you don’t, get thee to wikipedia, pronto.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Well. I knew who Emmett Till was…and I am British.
Likewise. I’ve even taught classes to 12-13 year olds about him in the UK.
Is this actual ignorance or just performative though? I’m open to either explanation – you have to be pretty thick to be a white supremacist, after all.
I know who Emmett Till is. I’d expect any of my peers who are interested in interracial dynamics to know who that is. I’m German. There is no excuse for a US citizen with at least average education to not at least have heard the name, and to know that it is related to the civil rights movement. Once you remember “civil rights movement” there’s only three groups for famous names: Victims, activists or egregious perpetrators.
This is legit why anyone with a blue check is now openly mocked on Xitter.
I live in Europe. While I did not recall the name, I had certainly heard of the open-casket event.
Methinks ‘white trash’ avoid talking about things that make them feel guilty.
Like the Japanese and the hundreds of thousands of “Comfort girls”.
This german has, literally decades before moving to the US.
“Some 1955 event the libs care about”
I have some news for Stephen Wolfe. There was a lynching back in 1915 and the jews still get very upset about it.
Because lynchings are a symbol that trancends time.
But I suppose Stephen Wolfe and friends are no more concerned about jews than about blacks.
Autobot Silverwynde @ 4, is Xitter properly pronounced as shitter?
birgerjohansson @ 7, some turds tend to only care about premeditated murder if it’s one of their family members. If it’s anyone else, they don’t care and if it’s someone whose skin tone is darker than theirs, they really don’t care.
Interestingly, I’m utter rubbish in remembering names. No, rubbish is too weak a term. But, even I manage to retrieve Emmett Till’s name and the violent crime committed against him in mere milliseconds.
Had I a shitter account, I’d likely have replied my level of soothing comfort to know that premeditated murder is not a concern to the respondents to the tweet (or is it sheet now?) and state my assurance that I’ll show no anget were they murdered in the same way. Indeed, I’d hold a party in celebration.
Remarkable though, a college professor referring people to Wikipedia. My, have things changed! ;)
I think this ends up depending a lot on your education system – if you don’t get taught somewhere that actually cares about racial history? You won’t hear about Emmet Till. It’s not frequent enough a discussion to be reliably learned elsewhere, if you don’t actively go looking.
They never taught us about Emmet Till in Texas, because… well… Texas. They never taught us about Tulsa 1921, either. Both of these I only learned about at all because of HBO (Lovecraft Country and Watchmen).
Everyone should know those… but in certain parts of the country, it’s shockingly easy not to.
birgerjohansson@7,
Just FYI, “jews” with a lower-case “j” is a regular feature of antisemitic discourse. Why? I’ve no idea, but it goes back a century at least (see for example T.S.Eliot’s 1920 poem Burbank with a Baedeker, Bleistein with a Cigar). Wise to avoid it if you prefer not to be suspected of antisemitism.
Tangential but thinking history and Civil Rights and something I didn’t know just seen on Wiklipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Parade
The more things change .. huh?
FWIW. An Aussie here who has at least heard the name of Emmett Till and gather he was a Civil Rights activist from MLK days who was brutally murdered by White Supremacists. I’d say willful ignorance for the people in the OP here but maybe its “just” plain ignorance – in either case clearly more education and esp on what has happened to African-American people over inthe US of A is the obviously badly required remedy here.
Emmet wasn’t an activist, he was just a kid. He was 14 years old when some white woman accused him of whistling at her on the street. For that, a mob of racist thugs kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered him, and dumped his body in a river.
Like Corey @ 9, I’m going to have to confess that I didn’t hear of Emmett TIll or Tulsa until just a few years ago and from the exact same sources. While we had a brief, bowdlerized version of American civil rights history in middle and high schools, neither were mentioned.
I’ll tell you who won’t know who Emmett Till was: students in Florida and Texas. Probably most of the red states, as well. They’ll be busy learnin’ how slavery was good for the slaves.
As a UK citizen originally I heard about Till a long time back but I only learned about the Tulsa Massacre in 1921 and other similar events much more recently. I also learned about a WW2 incident where British citizens fought alongside black servicemen against white military police who were abusing them.
Larry @ 14, no, they’re not. The law is new and schools aren’t in session yet.
Late next month and September is when miseducation begins.
Doesn’t surprise me. People have forgotten James Byrd Jr. and that was only 25 years ago; I don’t know if his heinous story is included in Texas history education or not.
I was taught nothing about Emmett Till in school, but I’ve known about him since the 1970s.
Thanks to Bob Dylan, who also taught me about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Davey Moore and a few other people.
You have to know who to listen to.
Growing up in the midwest US in the 80s and 90s, I vaguely remember being taught about lynching, but it was as if it was something that happened in the distant past – not during our parents’ lifetimes. And the victims’ names were never mentioned. I feel ashamed on behalf of my teachers and others that I only learned Emmett Till’s story a few years ago.
The main reason I couldn’t tell you the specifics of Emmett Till’s circumstances is that my head is so full of so many other stories just like it, scattered across the decades. The same lies, racism, bias, and contempt that killed him is still killing black kids today. There’s just too many names.
KG @ 10
Oops! Thanks, that was a land mine I don’t want to step on.
BTW do klansmen and other filth use lower case for “blacks”?
Corey Fisher @ 9
I went to high school 20 miles from Tulsa, graduated in 1976.
We weren’t taught about the Tulsa Race Riot; I didn’t learn about them except “by accident”, years later.
_
Isilzha Mir @ 19
This.
Mid-70s, so hardly surprising.
_
I was not joking, under the circumstances I should probably have used the upper case ‘B’ until certain.
.
Thanks to the Evil Empire there are a lot of countries with English as their official language.
Each of them develop a separate meaning for some words.
In South Africa “colored” means a person of mixed ancestry, in USA it is an old-fashioned word for “Black” and is probably not used by people who are up to date on sensitivity.
.
Tragically there are a lot of murdered people in American history, I only recall the names of two presidents plus Malcolm X and MLK. And the nicknames for two murdered western gunmen,.
@8: Yes. Call it Shitter now. 😏
I don’t know the details of the Till case, I just know he was brutally murdered for no damn reason by a bunch of racist assholes. I also know that it never should have happened. If that means that my mind is “captured”, so be it.
I used to call twitter twiturd but shitter works as well.
Emmett Till’s casket is in the Smithsonian in DC, and both times I’ve visited it there was a waiting line.
In my mind (and many others) the term ‘lynching’ is much more appropriate than ‘murder’ in these stories. It bears the connotation of ‘illegal execution’ by an organized group rather than just a ‘death at the hands of others. And, those republiklans that lynched him were tried by a ‘good ol’ boy’ all white jury and were acquitted.
birgerjohansson @ 24, there have been a hell of a lot of people murdered throughout human history, the US just continues that dubious distinction as a tradition, or something.
As for US presidents killed, there were 4. Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK. Two more had attempts, Theodore Roosevelt and Reagan. Roosevelt actually gave a speech right after being shot, Reagan nearly died.
shermanj @ 28, at the time, Till would’ve been lynched by Southern Democrats. Those switched to the GOP, courtesy of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, capitalizing upon the schism that was longstanding in the Democratic party. Articles abound about the entire mess, but suffice it to say that the party doesn’t miss the racist bastards.
Okay, so you have a head for historical trivia. You deserve a trophy, I guess.
That’s the correct approach to take and the right attitude, IMHO.
Far fewer people know who Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore were:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_T._Moore
@29- wzrd1
The ghost of McKinley instigated the assassination attempt on TR. It would be a nasty infection during his trek down an unknown Brazilian river that would hasten TR’s demise, though a previously sustained injury to the same leg didn’t help.
Actually South Park was prescient. Shitter is what would happen if Twitter combined with Neuralink:
Don’t give Musk any ideas…
The blue check mark bit in the title is meaningless.
All it means is whoever posted paid a fee to post, instead of posting for free.
(Once, it sorta meant something else, but now it’s quite irrelevant)
Naw, the blue checkmark means that you are who it says that you are.
Meet God.
https://twitter.com/god
Somehow, I’m sure that Trump was irked no end that he couldn’t have that account.
Don’t call them tweets any more, either. Now they’re exudations.
@ ^ John Morales : Or maybe Xits? With iniitial ‘X’ pronounced “Z” so “zits” – or the Chinese X turned S so shits or sheets perhaps?
@12. Artor :
Yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
Thanks for that. I stand, well, sit & type, corrected
Xenophobias? Excretions? Xenophobic excrement?
Extrusions.
I’m still thinking, yeah, they’re shits. Maybe sheets, inflected to imply shits.
Although, most output from the site is just simply turds.
wzrd1 @ # 29: Two more had attempts…
Three: Andrew Jackson had the privilege of first-shot-at-while-President, in 1835.
Four, if you count Squeaky Fromme’s fumbled go at Gerald Ford.
Five, including the idiot who popped away at the White House from the lawn during Bill Clinton’s tenure.
Correction @ my # 41 – Jackson wasn’t literally shot at – his attacker pulled trigger on a derringer and a pistol, but both misfired.
I thought “is this bad or something?” was a response to the information they found on Google. Why aren’t they absolutely horrified? What is wrong with people????!!!??
Even if it is about their previous ignorance is that what they got from this? ‘Oh dearly me, look at me, I have no feelings at all about the content I found’. I read the one sentence summary on Google and know that i’m going to be so horrified and angry if I read it that I won’t be able to sleep.
I grew up in the UK, so didn’t know much of anything about American civil rights history until after I moved to Texas almost 30 years ago, and while I did learn about Emmet Till fairly soon after, I had never even heard of Black Wall Street in Tulsa or the massacre that ended it, until watching that episode of Lovecraft Country.
I’m no history buff, but I have watched a lot of documentaries and current affairs shows (PBS style, not Fox News) over the years, and I’m a frequent Googler, so I was shocked that I had never come across even a mention of the events of 1921 in over 25 years living in the US.
If it was just about Texas, I would surely have heard about it via the media or online, but nope, not even an inkling.
Of course we can say the same thing about British history. I had no idea that British troops had massacred hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Punjab in 1919 until reading about in well into adulthood. There’s no excuse for it, but there’s little doubt that all nations put their institutional thumbs on the scale when it comes to teaching their history.
[quote] Of course we can say the same thing about British history. I had no idea that British troops had massacred hundreds of unarmed civilians in the Punjab in 1919 until reading about in well into adulthood. There’s no excuse for it, but there’s little doubt that all nations put their institutional thumbs on the scale when it comes to teaching their history. [/quote]
Oh god, same. As a kid I was proud that ‘we’ had been ‘the first country to stop slavery!’ As an adult…. jesus christ. I understand why they call the Union Jack the Butcher’s Apron, and I see how in denial the whole country still is.
I learned about Emmett Till maybe in the decade after university. I can’t bear to think about what Mamie Till went through, and I cannot comprehend how in the midst of all of that she had the clear-sightedness to make the decision she did. No-one who’s seen that photo will ever forget how evil humans can be.