We don't know why her site is down or how much heat she personally got over this.
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A white woman was placed on a curation team at the AA Smithsonian museum
- Thread starter RastaMentality
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No. That is incorrect, and highly reductive. Just read the thread. Its pretty informative.
I read the first several pages when the thread went up, but haven't touched it since the update. Not sure if I wanna read through 13-14 pages of forum posts. Unless you are saying there is legit shit to be known in here...and I mean LEGIT.
This thread is beyond crap. Having read a lot of pages, surprised it hasn't been locked yet. Yay for harassment, I guess? I mean calling the black people who supported her uncle toms is pretty drastic and uncalled for.
Pretty embarrassing.
Pretty embarrassing.
The thread is 1,500 posts long. It's quite fair for someone to ask for a recap at this point, especially given how much the situation changed.
"I'm trying to catch up but can't actually be bothered so I'm just going to cry for some attention instead"
I hate that Twitter can judge and demand punishment on a person without even a shred of research done first.
I guess it comes down to whether you value the discussion that was had, or whether you're just curious about what the end result of it was.
To be honest I'm not sure how much value a good portion of those later threads were.
Yes, there is a lot of good discussion about black representation, if that's legit enough for you
I'll admit I laughed pretty hard at this
We can thank Big_Blue for quoting the op in his post on the first page
Oh, Jesus. I didn't even notice that.
And now he's in here defending the thread with, "It sucks that she was harassed but hey, we had a conversation about important issues, right guys?"
Oof.
Of course its fair. Lol. I'm just some rando on the internet. I feel like reading it is a better idea than sort of jumping in like that.
Not to toot my own horn, but this is the result of 10-15 min of Googling I did earlier today. (For whatever reason, OP refuses to include these posts in the revised OP as context and supporting evidence.)
Then Super Corpse Soldier pointed out that the Tweetthread OP posted to prove Burnside was THE curator actually proved the opposite, and that was all she wrote.
Personally, I don't think whatever "discussion" was had in this thread was worth it. It got very ugly.
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tl;dr (from my pov)
- Twitter got outraged, because the Hip Hop section of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, was curated by a white woman.
- OP created a thread
- Then it was found out she has been working there 10+ years.
- It was also found out she is passionate about her work.
- So people realised her qualifications were alright
- the discussion morphed into one about black representation, and the exhibit being potentially whitewashed
- Then it was revealed that the museum has predominantly black staff, she has black bosses, etc.
- The word "Bad Optics" was used a lot.
- Some users suggested that only black people should be given roles in the museum.
- Some users suggest it would be "weird" for a black person to be curating a Norwegian museum
- Some users suggested that is kinda racist...
- Some users suggested that it's racist for suggesting it's racist?
- Some black users thought the outrage was nonsensical, atleast one was called an uncle toms in the process
- Some users thought it was a thoughtful discussion about black representation vs diversity
- Then it turned out there was no such thing as the "hip hop section"
- The lady didn't really have a senior position in the museum
- fake news?
- Also her website is now down :/
the thing I find interesting is that the revelation that she's not a senior person is the thing to calm this thread down.
It's fucking insane that in 2018, the idea of a non-black person having a senior position at a black museum really that... controversial?
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This has been the excuse of right-wing reactionaries for decades, and they do it because traditional media allowed them to. The unfortunate reality is the internet is very similar to other forms of media. Essentially another tool to propagate false conservative narratives about principles, and anger people with false stories and hypotheticals.
This thread is an embarrassment. You people sit on your high-horses all day looking down on people cry "fake news" but you sat here for damn near 30 pages reacting to a story/situation you knew dick all about based on a random tweet.
Truly pathetic. How is this not locked?
Truly pathetic. How is this not locked?
At this point, it's probably better to keep it open for a bit longer as many people left the thread thinking one thing and are unaware of the updates.
Closing it now would feel a bit awkward, as if we're pretending it never happened.
Ah, this one is definitely directed towards me. My point was that I found it hard to believe that a black person would be given the same benefit of the doubt regarding the strength of their credentials to curate something outside of their perceived cultural background.
Also, I find it a little unfair that many people's arguments are being misrepresented. A lot of sentiment here was from the standpoint of representation from the beginning. I'm not exactly sure why the prevailing summary of the "opposition's" argument was that Burnside's race invalidated her credentials. I sure as shit didn't argue that. Nor did someone like Royalan, etc.
OP
OP
Oof. the conversation about black representation in black cultural spaces was important and a lot of good points were made over the past 20 pages.
The misrepresentation is because the several faux-liberal racists that populate this site see this thread as the ultimate gotcha-moment and are reveling in black people mistakenly being annoyed with something they perceived to be true :)
Ultimately this thread was a nice discussion about why it's important to have black representation in black spaces, not that that should disallow people of other backgrounds to be included as well
Oh man. 31 pages. i dunno what i think about this, i mean if i was in her position i wouldn't and i find it irresponsible and kinda gross but there are plenty of other things i can be outraged about and spend my energy on and this isnt one of them. but i understand it. not to discount everyones response to it
The problem with the representation argument was that it was established pretty early on that there was a lot of African American staff in both lower and upper echelons at the African American history museum. So in that context, what does "representation" mean? Does it mean a black monopoly on jobs there, de facto if not de jure? Or does it mean diversity, in the sense of many people of different backgrounds coming together? People were arguing that she should have allowed her position to be filled by a black person to promote "representation" in that context.
That conversation happened despite your inflammatory OP, not because of.
So not only you pretending you didn't fuck up by blasting this woman and her employer from the jump, you're trying to twist it into being the catalyst for an important discussion.
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Considering that was literally the point of the discussion, ya the thread was the catalyst for it.
okay read through some of this, what the fuck. embarrassing op. if you wanted to make a point about representation in cultural historical spaces there are good ways to have that conversation and spreading misinformation and inciting inflammatory responses is not that. just is bad for everyone.
fuckin lol
Not trying to offend anyone, but I can't just sit here to read through 30 pages straight of a thread. I have to leave and come back. It would take me a very long ass time to finish a thread like this.
The point of your OP was to call out this poor lady and the people who were defending her. Any discussion about representation in the study of black spaces was incidental to that.
I don't doubt this happens.... but it's also the kinda thought patterns we need to stomp out, not reinforce.
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The point of the OP was literally "should white people be allowed to lead black cultural sections of museums?" You're still acting like people were attacking the woman the entire thread.
Hell, Timothy's name wasn't even IN the OP beforehand.
"I guess we didn't learn anything about fake news or dangerous social media witch hunts based on nothing, since there was a teachable moment there. I guess nobody learned anything but the important thing is that we can all feel good about ourselves."
It's like saying an Alex Jones video on gay frogs led to some groundbreaking LGBT discussion.
It's like saying an Alex Jones video on gay frogs led to some groundbreaking LGBT discussion.
Not everyone will agree, but here's my take.
I think a big reason that people got so frustrated by this issue, was that it wasn't just about any aspect of Black culture. It was about Hip Hop, specifically. Hip Hop, which is still relatively new, relatively young, and not particularly highly regarded (despite its obvious influence and selling power). And when I say not highly regarded, I don't just mean by white people and pundits on Fox who think it's the cause of all of society's ills. I mean by other black people. Older black people.
I can't speak for everybody, but in my family, when I was a kid if I ever played anything rap around my elders that wasn't "Summertime" by Will Smith it was immediately regarded as garbage. Turn that shit off!
Hip Hop, despite its deserved cultural place, is still fighting for its legitimacy as not just an artform, but a black artform. And so you have this idea of an exhibit, honoring Hip Hop, in the most prominent African American history museum in the country, and the honor of curating it is being given to a white person. I made clear in pretty much all of my posts that I respect Burnside and had no doubt to her qualifications and dedication to such a project...but again, I can't pretend to not know why that would tick people off. Black people have been fighting for Hip Hop to be respected.
I also understand why the "well, the leadership of the museum is Black and they chose her, so..." didn't carry a whole lot of weight for a lot of people, because it fell in line with the dismissive attitudes towards Hip Hop that a lot of black people associate with not just out-of-touch white people, but out-of-touch older black people. You don't care about Hip Hop anyway, you think it's trash, so of course you'd toss this off to the immediate white person available.
And again I feel the need to say that this isn't how I feel. But we're talking about a group of people that has only ever had their culture taken advantage of and appropriated in this country. Is anyone really surprised at the initial backlash?
And that's why I still say that while everybody was going off on Twitter about this over the weekend, somebody in the know could have fixed their fingers to say, "Everyone chill, it's not what you think it is." Instead, pretty much everyone was saying, "It is what you think it is, and you're making a big deal over nothing."
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