Black Twitter and The Box
Black Twitter and The Box
A Black ex-pat living in Switzerland can choose not to subscribe to reductionist boxes ascribed by Black Twitter or any other idea or entity that deliberately or reflexively ascribes boxes.
One of my favorite rappers/actors in the game, Mos Def, released an album called Black on Both Sides in 1999.
A line in the song ‘Got’ on that album reflects what happened on Twitter (now ‘X’) to me, almost twenty years to the day Mos Def released that album.
Mos said, “But I'm from Brooklyn, certain shit you just don't do.”
I joined ‘X’ (formerly known as Twitter–I will use them interchangeably) in 2009 when I could be considered an early adopter. The site still had less than 50 million unique viewers at that time. In contrast, 2019 produced over 150 million active daily users. Today, there are over 250 million active daily users.
My usage and ‘X’ acumen evolved quickly. Within a few months, I grew to around 3000 followers and was determined to make ‘X’ my main social media platform. Why not?
I was connecting with great people, moving from online to offline dialogue, expanding my network in ways that I had never experienced, and having fun. I was determined to take my Twitter game to the next level.
After taking a corporate DEI job at Novartis's research division to help start up the DEI efforts there, my Twitter activity took a back seat. Social media management, even with the tools emerging at the time, takes time. No longer running and doing business development in a consultancy, the need diminished.
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My time ' X ' was limited by the demands of a new role and my personal commitments, including learning a new city, fitness, and dating. Thus, ‘X’ and I fell out of touch.
After being away for quite some time, I was unaware of trends, sub-networks, and the latest influencers to follow. Even the nomenclature and rules of the platform that became normative to daily and regular users were foreign to me.
I’d heard of some people on the platform and via other media channels about “Black Twitter.” I even once found myself looking up BlackTwitter.com.
(I did so more recently, and this image came up on Google–hindsight is 20/20!) When searching the site on DuckDuckGo, I got the real content without a warning. (What’s up with that, Google? 🤨)
I don’t recall that a site came up when I searched around 2013-14. It was just a series of Twitter links from influencers.
So, after that, I didn’t think much of so-called #BlackTwitter other than occasionally hearing someone reference it.
Fast-forward to 2019. I had been living in Switzerland as a resident for about 8-9 months. I was longing for home. Even though social media is global, it remains predominantly American-centric. Thus, pop culture news was readily available.
Interestingly, ‘X’ became a primary news source for me; at least for entertainment purposes. (And, I’m aware that such news is sketchy at times.)
The movie Harriet, directed by Kasi Lemmons, who also directed Eve’s Bayou (1997) and, more recently in 2022, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, was soon to be released.
(As a side note, the lead characters in the two biopics above were British actresses – Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) and Naomi Ackie (Whitney Houston)).
The film Harriet (who my mother, Dr. Harriett Johnson, was named after) was set for a November 1, 2019, opening. Their promotions were rolling, and Twitter was heavy with stories and storylines that went into the creation of the movie.
One source shared that a woman, who happens to be white, was one of the main consultants on the movie. Now, this was not just any pull-up-a-chair-and-talk- “Black” historical figures kind of white woman.
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The consultant, Kate Clifford Larson, has a Ph.D. in American History with a focus on Modern U.S. Women’s and African American History. This is in addition to B.A. and M.A. degrees from Simmons College for Women in History and Economics and an M.B.A. in finance.
But that’s not all. When the movie came out, she had written two books on Tubman and was working on a third, which was published in 2021. Further, she served as a consulting historian on several film projects, including The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, with Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, Jr., who, by many accounts, is one of the greatest living African-American history scholars in the world.
Let’s say, Dr. Larson has receipts. A lot of them.
I read the thread discussing the film and people's disdain for Dr. Kate Larson's hiring. Naively, I responded, “Isn’t she qualified?”
An influencer responded to my tweet. I don’t recall her name, but she had around 45,000+ followers then. Her response:
“Did you say ‘Better’?” I obviously did not.
It didn’t matter. From that instance, my notifications lit up with everything from tweets saying, “He cappin’ on white women!” to gifs signaling that I had broken some sort of code written by the invisible hand of Black Twitter.
One user did her “research” (a simple web search) and discovered that I am a Swiss resident from Topeka, Kansas (USA). She then proceeded with Wizard of Oz jokes and began to make negative references to my family and conclusions about my understanding of the Black American experience. (This has happened a few times since I moved to Switzerland.)
While the barrage of notifications and derogatory comments was anxiety-producing (I found my heart racing a bit from the energy being projected), the references to my family were enraging. They were the only ones I reacted to. I threatened excoriation—the young lady apologized and stopped.
With her and the others, it was clear that the dialogue about race and what was held in the domain of Blackness was more reductionist than I’d ever experienced.
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I went outside of the Black Twitter Box to users ‘X' in that thread.
With a simple tweet of three words and an attempt at reframing, I violated the unwritten rules of virtual racial reductionist rhetoric.
I wasn’t clear about this “violation” immediately. Still, as I was writing my book, Reconstructing Inclusion, it became evident that I had been doing so naturally (i.e., via my mindset) for quite some time.
In retrospect, the experience revealed that much of the conversation on and offline about what is meant to be exclusively of and for Black people was a boxed-in notion.
The problem is, in truth, there is no box.
A colleague of mine, Fred Falker, gave a brilliant TedX talk where he used the famous 9-dot puzzle to make a point about boxes.
His point was that in the 9-dot puzzle, the imaginary box we place on problems limits or obstructs our ability to solve them. This is especially the case when it comes to how we classify humankind.
What occurs to our mental frames as a box is a mutable thing. It has a range of conceptualizations, but they are only that—concepts—our imagined parameters of what is or isn’t.
They serve a discrete purpose in a discrete time. They can expand our mental models or reduce them to such an extent that we cannot escape them.
There is no box; the frames change, and the possibilities of what is are endless.
That means a white woman can be an authority on a historically Black American figure.
And, a Black ex-pat living in Switzerland can choose not to subscribe to reductionist boxes ascribed by Black Twitter or any other idea or entity that deliberately or reflexively ascribes boxes.
Why would he? They are non-existent. “Certain ‘ish’ you just don’t do!”
I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
In this episode of the ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ podcast, let’s discuss the current state and “the attacks” on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and the need to redefine its contemporary frame. I talk about the concept of iatrogenic effects, drawing from the work of Ivan Illich, and its relevance in the DEI space. Why are self-reflection, intentional broadening, greater contact, and the promotion of agency in mitigating iatrogenic effects important in advancing the potential of DEI work?