Member-only story
The Whitewashing of Northwest Activism
The erasure of Black labor from conversations about protests leads to a misunderstanding of the history in the making
Last night I crawled into bed with the erroneous belief that Ben Shapiro’s apparent unawareness that vaginas can get wet would be the most profoundly ignorant thing I would read all day. But the day was not over yet, and alas, there were even worse takes to be had.
I opened the Twitter app and was launched into an in-progress argument between Seattle comedian Brett Hamil and arch-centrist Matt Yglesias. The point of contention was Matt’s resoundingly uninformed hot take regarding the announcement that Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best would be resigning.
For Yglesias, the “interesting and noteworthy” thing about the announcement of Best’s resignation is “that in one of the least-black major American cities, a mass protest movement has succeeded in displacing a black police chief in the name of antiracism.”
Dozens of Seattleites quickly hopped on the thread to point out what Yglesias’s take had missed. “Hey Matt. Black &…
