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Quote by Hank Green

“You want stories that make sense, and this might not make sense to you. We build narratives of genius and exceptionality among the people who have power, and they are often exceptional, but no more exceptional than hundreds of thousands of others. In your system, power concentrates naturally. And so the thing that is most exceptional about a powerful person is almost always their power.”

Quote by Hank Green

Book:A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
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A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

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Hank Green
Hank Green

Hank Green is an entrepreneur born on May 5, 1980. He is one of the co-founders of Vlogbrothers, a popular YouTube channel with a large audience. Green is known for his contributions to internet content creation, education, and technological innovation. more

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“Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing ideologies of individualism and meritocracy. They also do whites a disservice by obscuring the white allies behind the scenes who worked hard and long to open the field. These allies could serve as much-needed role models for other whites.”

RacismAlliesMeritocracyExceptionalismRacial EqualityExceptionalityDesegregation
Book:What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy
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“This "cargo," this group of twenty to thirty Angolans, sold from the deck of the White Lion by criminal English marauders in exchange for food and supplies, was also foundational to the American story. But while every American child learns about the Mayflower, virtually no American child learns about the White Lion. And yet the story of the White Lion is classically American. It is a harrowing tale--one filled with all the things that this country would rather not remember, a taint on a nation that believes above all else in its exceptionality. The Adams and Eves of Black America did not arrive here in search of freedom or a better life. They had been captured and stolen, forced onto a ship, shackled, writhing in filth as they suffered and starved. Some 40 percent of the Angolans who boarded that ghastly vessel did not make it across the Middle Passage. They embarked not as people but as property, sold to white colonists who were just beginning to birth democracy for themselves, commencing a four-hundred-year struggle between the two opposing ideas foundational to America. And so the White Lion has been relegated to what Bennett called the "back alley of American history." There are no annual classroom commemorations of that moment in August 1619. No children dress up as its occupants or perform classroom skits. No holiday honors it. The White Lion and the people on that ship have been expunged from our collective memory. This omission is intentional: when we are creating a shared history, what we remember is just as revelatory as what we forget.”

AmericaHistoryUnited StatesSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksExceptionalismExceptionalityForgotten History
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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