Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
I think us white folks have a hard time hearing and processing things like what @popcornreel is saying here about needing Black-owned media.
(Conditioned white supremacist reactions: “Isn’t •that• racist?” “People should just learn not to see color!” “Can’t we all just get along™?” etc etc)
If you see this and then your inner Reply Guy starts piping up with stuff like that, I encourage you to block him and take a step back. Think about the context and the big picture here.
My attempt at a quick menu of food for thought:
- Racism isn’t just a bad attitude. It’s systemic. It’s baked into our institutions, baked into who •owns• what, who •controls• what.
- Specifically, ownership of MSM is overwhelmingly white. That’s both an effect •and• a cause of racism.
- In a situation like this, it is grossly insufficient to wish away systemic and structural forces; we have to actively •counter• them.
- One of the best ways to counter those forces is to put the people they’ve marginalized in positions of actual power, give them actual ownership. That’s both redress for past harm •and• an active solution for the future.
TL;DR: more Black-owned media? Yes please.
2/2
@inthehands I agree, it is a worthy vision. I am struggling to understand the method to “put the people they’ve marginalized in positions of actual power, give them actual ownership.” For a publicly owned company, does that mean something like a shareholder revolt? Or hostile takeover? For a privately owned company, the means are even more obscure to me. One thing I think we know for sure is that court ordered sales/breakups, anti monopoly legislation, or state seizures of #MSM property are not viable in the current political reality. Ideas? 
@meltedcheese
It’s a good question, and I’m well out of my depth trying to answer it. The one thing I feel confident saying is that it needs to be an “all of the above” sort of approach: break down barriers to advancement within existing media orgs AND gather backing for new orgs AND start small AND start big AND start shareholder revolts AND start customer results AND fight monopolies AND fight oligarchies AND…. Relative merits of those? How to execute each one? What I’m missing? No idea.
@inthehands In our time, especially when it comes to ownership at that scale, wealth is enabling. That is one of the reasons I think reparations must be part of the big solution to systemic racism.