Erasure By Colorism and Respectability Politics

 


I don't know why it always falls to me to say these things but:

1. The McDonogh Three: Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne, integrated New Orleans public schools with Ruby Bridges.

2. As romantic as the words on this image of Ruby Bridges' shadow being cast by Vice President elect Kamala Harris (Rosa sat so Ruby could walk so Kamala could run) may seem, Ruby walked before Rosa sat. And 

3. Claudette Colvin sat before Rosa Parks, who worked for the NAACP at the time. Colvin's courageous act of defiance was erased from history and Parks volunteered to reenact it because Claudette was a teenager who was darker skinned with 4c hair and at the time also pregnant and therefore as far as the NAACP was concerned, failed both the brown paper bag respectability tests.

4. So basically if folks insist on this much poetic license, the words should read, "Ruby and the McDonogh Three walked, so Claudette could sit and Rosa with the" good hair and fair skin" could get the credit, so Shirley Anita Chisholm could run (and be the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress and run for President when Obama was a seven-year-old boy) and be forgotten so Kamala could run and be hyper-canonized for being elected.

Harmless seeming memes made with good intentions are one of the many paths to erasure in activism.

Thus endth the Black history lesson.

You are welcome.

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