“I think I’m afraid to find out what some people are going to accept as a valid version of history. I don’t really want to know what’s in some folks heads about it. I know people can tell the difference between farce and realism, but I’m talking about the yarn itself. The swashbuckling ex-slave hero narrative.
Maybe I would feel differently if I knew that most Americans had a good foundational knowledge of slavery, but they don’t. Or a good understanding of Reconstruction, even. But they don’t. I cringe to think people like the story of Django so much because it may be more palatable to their laziness than the real thing.
People were like, carrying their babies over ice floes and shit on their backs, trying to cross rivers. Passing for white and abandoning their families. Killing their own children. Aborting their own babies. Trying to locate pieces of their fragmented families. abandoning all hope of seeing any of their kin ever again. Walking for days or weeks in the direction they hoped was north. Up nights plotting. Creating secret codes using anything from speech to quilting. Losing limbs. Losing lives. Fighting in the damn Union army. Evading armed bounty hunters who intended to drag them back as property. For CENTURIES this was happening. All so they wouldn’t have to live in bondage. And some of them survived, which is why I even exist.
There are parts of the idea of Django I like, but I just dont need the action-hero blaxploitation thing. This shit wasn’t funny or fun or cute or badass. I think the above, the actual shit, is heroic enough for me.”
- B SAYS
Maybe I would feel differently if I knew that most Americans had a good foundational knowledge of slavery, but they don’t. Or a good understanding of Reconstruction, even. But they don’t. I cringe to think people like the story of Django so much because it may be more palatable to their laziness than the real thing.
People were like, carrying their babies over ice floes and shit on their backs, trying to cross rivers. Passing for white and abandoning their families. Killing their own children. Aborting their own babies. Trying to locate pieces of their fragmented families. abandoning all hope of seeing any of their kin ever again. Walking for days or weeks in the direction they hoped was north. Up nights plotting. Creating secret codes using anything from speech to quilting. Losing limbs. Losing lives. Fighting in the damn Union army. Evading armed bounty hunters who intended to drag them back as property. For CENTURIES this was happening. All so they wouldn’t have to live in bondage. And some of them survived, which is why I even exist.
There are parts of the idea of Django I like, but I just dont need the action-hero blaxploitation thing. This shit wasn’t funny or fun or cute or badass. I think the above, the actual shit, is heroic enough for me.”
- B SAYS