Thomas Chatterton Williams
@thomaschattwill
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Staff writer: @TheAtlantic. Faculty: @BardCollege. Trustee: @AmericanAcademy. Fellow: @GuggFellows, @AEI. Representation: @APBspeakers, Wylie. Next đ: @AAKnopf
New York
Joined April 2010
đ¨NEW BOOK ALERTđ¨. The Summer of 2020 shocked me. For going on five years now, I have felt the need to understand how and why the combination of a live-streamed global pandemic, an unprecedented mass response to the wrenching, videotaped death of a single man in Minneapolis
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I'm a 40-year-old American descendent of slaves. The year is 2021, and I have been "free" my entire life.
When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom theyâre referring to is for white people. This land is stolen land and Black people still arenât free.
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We have spent the past few years debating how oppressive the U.S. is. These images of Afghans clinging to a U.S. plane and falling from the sky are a damn sobering reminder that while there are no utopias, we'd better appreciate the society we were lucky enough to be born into.
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Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so screwed.
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Just learned if you phrase the question:. Should convicts be ALLOWED to study for the GED and pursue a college education? most Americans will respond: No. If you say: Should convicts be FORCED to study for the GED and pursue a college education? most Americans will respond: Yes.
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This has to be one of the best tweets of all time now:
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Mind blowing to watch activists tell this woman âthis is not the timeâ to mention that the man shot by police had been *shooting into her apartment* where her kids were.
Things boiled over during Saturdayâs rally and march for Tekle Sundberg, when the 24 year old woman who says he was shooting into her apt. showed up voicing her frustration with those gathering in front of her building on Sundbergâs behalf. @kare11 * video contains profanity *
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Content aside. One of the reasons podcasts have exploded their audiences while cable news dwindles is that itâs actually just unbearable as a viewer to watch a bunch of people shout over each other instead of fully making their points.
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I donât know who needs to hear this but
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What if, stay with me, these five men were actually agents responsible for their own reprehensible actions and not merely hapless puppets being manipulated by the invisible hand of inescapable and omnipotent white supremacy?
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The privilege I grew up with is that my parents really gave a damn, and that is worth more than money.
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You racialize a stranger. Publicly disrespect their entire career. Receive backlash. Refuse to apologize, dig in deeper and paint yourself as the victim in a gratuitous pile-on you started. Then the coup de grace? You solicit donations from strangers to finance your self-care đľâđŤ
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I reject Donald Trumpâs America, and I reject whoever would replace it with this.
Here are more protestors on the streets of DC demanding a woman raise her fist against âwhite supremacy.â They are actually proud of this shaming and bullying. They promote it as a job well done đ
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Idris Elba, welcome to the Intellectual Dark Web
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I donât know how to say this because Iâm so frustrated: A lot of voices on the left were talking romantically for months, all damn summer, about the righteous virtues of property destruction and âmostly peaceful protest.â This was playing with fire.
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When, exactly, did the artistic/intellectual/media culture shift from "I strongly disagree with your view" to "you should not be able to work"?.
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The fact that so many Americans of all ethnicities, geographies and colors wanted to see Democrats pay a resounding price not just for policy decisions but for a larger circa-2020 indulgence paid to so many deeply unpopular activist perspectives simply has to be taken seriously.
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There really is no side to be on but the side that is consistently against mob justice, chaos and violence.
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Twitter parsing whether Arabs are really Caucasians was inevitable in retrospect.
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He went in. This should be going viral.
MUST SEE: Democratic state Rep. John Deberry Jr. delivers an incredibly powerful speech on race in America.
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We are creating a society that is totally aggrieved at the very same time it is totally unforgiving.
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Words are not violence. Violence is violence. That distinction must never be downplayed or forgotten, even on behalf of a group we deem oppressed. Maximum solidarity with Salman Rushdie and may he recover fully and fast.
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Ascribing moral judgements to individuals on the basis of physical attributes and ancestral lineage is indefensible, no matter how sophisticated or seemingly high-minded the rationale.
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What kind of society are we trying to achieve? This is the absolute worst way to accept victory and guarantees the continuation of the very animosity you claim to abhor.
If youâre a Trumper I hope the pain and anxiety you feel now is excruciating. You voted against America and for a cult leader who has no redeeming or admirable qualities. Heâs a cretin who cares nothing about this country and you donât either. You deserve all the pain and more.
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I think many people misunderstand the purpose of an open letter. When you sign such a document, you are endorsing the ideas articulated in that letterâânot every idea held by every co-signatory at every stage of life. People can have differences in one area and agree in another.
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I lost my wedding ring swimming in the finger-shrinking cold Atlantic at high tide. Hoping against hope, I went back out several hours later at low tide, searched in all the rocks, and actually found that thing. Iâll take this as a metaphor for the matrimonial project in general.
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@MsMelChen at the same time, shouldn't the "fuck your feelings, I drink liberal tears" members greet that with a shrug?.
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If you care about the open society, itâs hard to think of many threats to it more serious than the restriction of access to booksâeven disagreeable ones. What appears to be happening at eBay and Amazon is seriously alarming.
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I wrote about how sad it is to see the inept handling of COVID-19 in the U.S. from Europe, where the response was serious not polarized. Life in France feels normal again, with one exception this summer: No tourists from hotspots like Russiaâor America.
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If you can't deal with living in a society that commemorates its own founders, warts and all, through statuary and other means, you really should consider expatriating to another society of your choosing, which you'd either hold in higher regard or at least feel less invested in.
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The tweet below is from a professor at Yale, and the context is babies being beheaded. Think about what happened to Erika Cristakis and @NAChristakis at Yale for simply suggesting college students should be able to reason through their own *Halloween costume* choices.
Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.
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A lot of people were quick to dismiss this as baseless, but copy-pasting from Wikipedia is worse than what Gay did:.
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This man has well over 1 million followers. @twitter does this violate any of your rules at all?.
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A couple years ago when my best friend told me he was profiling a comedian running for president in Ukraine for the New Yorker, I kind laughed at the idea. Jokes on meâZelensky is the most physically courageous and inspiring national leader of this era.
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Kyle Rittenhouse shot white people.
Employers, consider giving your Black employees a day or two off after the Rittenhouse verdict. Regardless of the outcome, itâs going to be hard for Black people to work and it isnât fair to expect them to.
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Two things that are true at the same time:. 1) I am deeply, deeply angered by and critical and suspicious of American police. 2) You could not pay me to live in a town or city or municipality that actually succeeded in abolishing its police force.
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I have a lot of more sophisticated reasons to reject the new orthodoxyâi.e., that all white people are inherently racistâbut itâs really just very simple for me: My mother is not a racist. And she never has been. No amount of new propaganda could ever make me lose sight of this.
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This is the exact *opposite* of the correct takeaway. She says Donald Trump âtapped into white identityâ when in fact the SOLE identity category he lost ground with wasâŚWHITES! We simply must have different voices influencing liberal culture and institutions in the post-woke.
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This old line from Stefan Zweig seems tailor-made for AOC's Met Gala message: "Every gesture of resistance which is void of either risk or impact is nothing but a cry for recognition.".
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As a young black kid with no family connections or intergenerational wealth, I had a father who instilled the value of study. I can look you in the eye and say that standardized testing changed the course of my life. Measuring how hard someone is willing to study *does matter.*.
Standardized testing doesnât help kids learn, and it doesnât help teachers teach. We need to measure what matters. #TEACH21
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How have these tweets still not been deleted?
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When your moral clarity leads you to this, my god:
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Elite-level gaslighting.
Marveling at the seamless transition from "Shadowbanning is ultra-MAGA paranoia" to "LOL of course they were de-amplifying the hard right, who thought this was news?".
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It's particularly disturbing to me to see some BLM chapters cheerlead the slaughter of Jewish civilians, including children. Jews have historically been among the first to march with blacks and to this day Jews are consistently among the most receptive audiences for antiracism.
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âIf we are not careful, our colleges will produce ⌠close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandistsâ âMartin Luther King, Jr.
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Essentially child abuse. Hard to imagine anything a genuine white racist could say that would be *more* damaging to the self-image and academic development of a young black child than this:.
A New York k-12 educator suggests black students DO NOT think analytically. She states this is why âeducation is not working for students of colorâ in the US. This was part of an âanti-racistâ discussion between NY educators. Critical Race Theory/ âanti-racismâ is neo-racism.
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This so deeply insulting and indicative of how belittling the racial conversation in America is becoming. The National Museum of African American History & Culture (with an assist from Robin DiAngelo!) defines as "white culture". -Work Ethic.-Intact family .-Rational thinking.1/
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2021 challenge: say no to stuff like this. Say no to reflexive tribalism. If a company, product or service is good, itâs good. Be kind to people you meet and judge people by their actions not abstract categorizations they have no control over.
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I will say this until I die: the SATs saved me from being stuck in mediocre schools.
It's fucking racist to say that black people can't be expected to take the SAT/ACT the same way a white or Asian kid can. The tests are not "racially biased." I resent and reject this completely.
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decolonization discourse is really showing its ass right now.
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We are clearly experiencing a crisis of leadership at all levels of societyâpolitical, cultural, intellectual, moral, spiritual. Many other problems are symptomatic of this.
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Probability that this will be extravagantly abused?. đŻ percent.
Now, when a business gains attention for reports of racist conduct, Yelp will place a new Business Accused of Racist Behavior Alert on their Yelp page to inform users, along with a link to a news article where they can learn more.
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The degree to which Manhattan air is now just saturated with the aroma of marijuana is frankly absurd.
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My black father from the segregated south is the single most punctual person I have ever known.
"White culture is obsessed with 'mechanical time' â clock time â and punishes students for lateness. This, he said, is but one example of how whiteness undercuts Black kids."
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You have one single life on this earth, and you're going to be indoctrinated into an all-consuming, quasi-religious belief that the *only* thing that determines your happiness and prosperity is the random lottery of the arbitrary color grouping you've been assigned at birth?.
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For a descendant of slave owners, it would make much more sense to say, âIâm ashamed of my ancestorsâ *actions*.â Otherwise, itâs like Hannah Arendt said: When all are guilty no one is.
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If you find yourself reaching for arguments about âmultiracial whitenessâ to explain why there are non-white people who think and act differently than youâd expect them to, you should at least *consider* the possibility that race canât explain everything
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Stop it.
Idea 10: If your gathering has a meal, consider having people plan to bring the food home rather than eating all together. Eating requires unmasking & unmasking means more chance of transmission. Alternative: have different households eat in different rooms at the gathering.
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A point that bears periodic repeating: many of the loudest voices on Twitter are unwell.
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Man canât even complete a sentence before heâs called a transphobe and accused of using a slur with a level of indignation that is unhinged.
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My parentsâ house is almost entirely filled with books and journals and magazines. I will forever be in awe of my dadâs lifelong commitment to the written wordâhis notion of a kind of transformative intergenerational wealth.
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Always amazed and touched by the sheer friendliness of strangers in the American south.
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I hate to break this to you, but right this very moment a âwhiteâ person (YOU) is arguing with a âblackâ person (ME) about when itâs okay to use that term!.
@thomaschattwill ok not sure why you are trying to change the subject. Feels like whataboutism which i don't entertain. my tweet was about white ppl who argue with Black ppl about when it's ok to use the N-word.
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Unreal.
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Vaccination status should never become an identity.
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It gives me no joy to say this because I miss the US and wish it were a place to return to, but what Hayes describes is not at all what anyone feels right now in Europeâwhere life post-Covid has basically returned to normal because government just isnât completely dysfunctional.
I'm curious if other people have had something in them break the last few weeks, where you realize "normal," or even a rough approximation of it is gone for a good long while. We've always known that at some level but I feel it intensely and viscerally right now.
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Two almost identical shootings. Right next to each other on the NYT today. The latter was even fatal, but there was no racial angle to apply, both the victim and the trigger-happy elderly shooter were white. Hence the fatality gets lower billing, much smaller headline, no photo.
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Do not let people pressure you into feeling like the progressive thing to do is to judge other people by their ancestry and skin.
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Derrick Bell is not literally being taught in grade schools, but CRT praxis has undeniably altered the way that many children are being taught and parents have noticed. This is not hard.
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It seems sensible to me to be opposed to both wanton violence by police against civilians and mindless rioting and looting as a response to it. So many seem to feel that renouncing one means implicitly condoning the other. But we donât have to pick sides. We can reject all of it.
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I don't see how you can come to any other conclusion than that Rufo really acquits himself well here.
âWhat do you like about being White?â I asked this question to anti- Critical Race Theory advocate Christopher Rufo. He stated that Whiteness was always only painted as negative, so I asked him to offer something different. Peep his response:
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Itâs a really complicated ethical dilemma, but ultimately Iâm afraid Trump has been made into a digital martyr for free speech and this will produce many, many negative consequences going forward.
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When fighting oppression becomes your identity/raison d'ĂŞtre, recognition (let alone acceptance or celebration) of progress must feel like an existential threat.
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For people coming to this tweet from others who have twisted it: the point is not to excuse the appalling scenes in Washington today, which Iâve already condemned. The point is to say that violence, lawlessness, destruction has to be categorically rejected, period.
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"I donât know anyone who lives in a âcommunity of color.â I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in . neighborhoods."
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One of the less remarked upon features of recent years throughout institutional cultureâcorporations, NGOs, universities, museums, publicationsâis that basically no one is willing to accept simply being a junior member of the hierarchy anymore. The proverbial intern arrives at.
MUST WATCH FOOTAGE: This is UCLA's Provost, Darnell Hunt, trying to negotiate with the UCLA Encampment Activists. They effectively lecture him and when he tries to briefly clarify something, they get mad at him, so he decides to leave. The Encampment Occupiers laugh at this
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On this site, if youâre not on the extremes, you lose whenever you engage provocation. The hard left and right can say anything without cost. Moderates have to ignore or respond carefully, with a hand tied behind the back. Itâs like playing a video game on a much tougher setting.
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This is straight-up tragic. The âanti-racismâ sweeping institutions still ends up rendering black people as somehow different, other, unable to meet even basic standards. Ralph Ellison weeps. âRutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammarâ
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My sense is that Chimamanda Adichie has attained a very rare status that is flatly uncancellable. That she exists in such a secure space makes it so important that she does not merely retreat but speaks up. And when she does, man, it's like Reason herself descending into battle.
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If @netflix sets the example of refusing to cave, that could potentially have significant ramifications, showing other companies that it really is possible to weather censorious backlash. (Chappelle has 97 percent approval from audiences).
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I understand the ways in which MLKâs famous quote about looking to âa day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their characterâ has been cynically deployed to avoid difficult racial reckoning. But still, this feels like serious regress:
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We are now officially living in the post-woke era. I believe it ended just after October 7, 2023. But since November 6, 2024 itâs not up for debate.
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This is legitimately anti-intellectual and far worse and more damning than I expected: . âOur reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done.â.
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Honestly, what do you imagine it is actually like to be non-white? No one ever told me my society "viewed me as trash.".
I say, if you want to ban CRT, you need to come up with another way of credibly telling minority kids that their society doesn't view them as trash.
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Twitter is an an amazing prism because you can watch fringe epistemologies congeal into orthodoxy in real time. A view that still strikes most as an enormous stretchâthat white supremacist racism explains bad actions of non-whites even where no whites are presentâis one example.
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It would simply never occur to me to think, let alone argue, that if I didnât do well on a test it was the testâs fault and not mine. Even more inconceivable that this could be an argument that many other people would come to find compelling.
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This is despicable.
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But I was assured that "cancel culture" doesn't exist.
Chappelle also claimed the situation has affected his upcoming documentary, saying, âThey began disinviting me from these film festivals. And now, today, not a film company, not a movie studio, not a film festival, nobody will touch this film."
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This thread is astonishing. Is this real? How can the NYT advertise itself through the rhetorical vehicle of separating JK Rowling from her own artistic creation/ intellectual property?.
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This is racism, plain and simple. I donât think she realizes it, but it is. Feeling like your identity insulates you from ever being in the wrong leads to enormous moral blind spots.
Love to see a young couple in love and enjoying each otherâs company and project all of my unresolved racial hangups onto it
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A good rule of thumb might be: No matter what youâre currently going through, donât compare your plight to that of the victims of the Holocaust or the enslaved.
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Still thinking about this Lin-Manuel Miranda apology. The highest goal of art canât be representation, just as the highest goal of thinking canât be activism. There has to remain a place for ambivalence, singularity and ambiguity.
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