Why Black People Need Our Own Twitter

Community is the superpower of Black personhood that White supremacy can never access. We need to lean into it.

Hal H. Harris
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A smartphone showing the Twitter start screen. Source: Unsplash.

I woke up at 5:30 this morning to see my favorite hellsite transmitting White supremacist trash.

Twitter Spaces was hosting a room called “Are there too many Black women in public?” The host was White. I was on the shitter. At the time I took a snapshot of the room on my iPhone, four of the other speakers were White. There were 71 listeners during that predawn hour using the Space as a substitute for morning radio.

“If America is racist, then why is it that African immigrants do so much more better than African-Americans?” one of the White speakers wondered as I tuned in. That five-second clip was all I needed to hear. Rush Limbaugh’s decrepit soul — with unfinished hate in his heart — had arisen and was haunting the creation Jack Dorsey decided to step away from on Monday. I hoped the approaching dawn would vaporize the possessed making such arguments.

A community is a story. I want to be the custodian and creator of Black folklore. I want to make the bricks that pave our streets and build our community’s houses.

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Hal H. Harris
LEVEL

Black on Both Sides. Medium Writers Challenge Winner. The founder of Established in 1865. I Tweet @Established1865. E-mail is hal.harris@est1865.com.