What makes this moment distinctive is not the violence, but the audience encountering it. When white Americans describe this behavior as “what dictatorships do,” they are not wrong but they are late in recognition. America has long depended on techniques commonly associated with authoritarian regimes, while insulating much of white America from their routine application. That insulation is now thinning. The shock is real. The surprise is telling. But neither is unprecedented.
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deglassco@mastodon.social
@deglassco@mastodon.social
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What makes this moment distinctive is not the violence, but the audience encountering it. -
They were many.They were many. Not just rulers, but households, elders, children—lives lived inside systems of memory, labor, belief, and power that did not require a single name. So, to say “Africa is a country” is not a cartographic error. It is the residue of training—what remains after empire leaves but its grammar stays.
Africa moved as many worlds. It still does.
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Image: Map of the ethnic diversity of Africa, overlaid with country borders. Source: National Geographic.