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Julia Sweeney's avatar

You nailed it, Sherman! It's not easy to tell the truth, because the truth is often complicated. People mostly want things easily understood, and their particular worldview reconfirmed, and their prejudices justified, and if you add to that - vilifying a group your audience loves to vilify, all the better! I found this when it came it came to religion, for certain groups I was involved with, they got very uncomfortable when I spoke positively about religious experiences (ha - not religious experiences, but rather positive experiences with religious people) because they wanted all religious people to be deluded idiots and that's what they expected from me, because I was an atheist. Anyway, I have tried to resist that, but the result is that I'm far less successful than I might have been. (Or that's what I tell myself! Ha.) But at least I can sleep at night. LOVE YOU SHERMAN. I loved this post.

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Tomas Baiza's avatar

Ugh.

UGH!

I sat for a long time after reading that article about HM's fictional-nonfiction. I realized that I unconsciously assumed that much of it was made up when I watched his special, and that I barely acknowledged my conclusion that he was creating a character as he related all of these wild stories. It never really occurred to me that anyone would take what he said at 100% face value. But clearly, many did.

I agree that it is very likely he made these choices to ensure that the desired effect on his target audience was unambiguous. Life is so much more complicated—and inconvenient—than that. I've loved so many white people, and it's sad to relate that the people who have filled my heart with the most fear are the ones who were assumed to be most "like" me. HM tried to remove the messiness of racism by drawing too easy a picture. Both the good and the bad are messy as hell.

Thanks for commenting on this.

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