Why Douglass? Why now? Why so much?

Seventy.

Seventy Readings?

This ritualization of Frederick Douglas is teaching us something.

Something racial.

I can feel it—something in me, in us (even in Douglass?) is being flattened by this… symbolism.

All this nonprofit investment, all this channeled energy into one “vein” of Black recognition—
It’s weird.
But it feels vaguely familiar to Black folks in Massachusetts. Especially in Boston.

Why is this leaned on so heavily?
Why has it become so widespread as an act of learning and healing—yet it feels so white-comforting?

It is a good read.
A true counter-memory.
It can provide general white America and Massachusetts with some sort of moral clarity and center white learning.

But where’s the rupture?
Where is the contemporary problemness?

Do Frederick Douglasses exist in the Black community today?
Who are the hypocrisy-callers—right now?
Where are they organizing, creating, defying?

What funding and resources do they have?

Instead: 70.

Something safer.

So what made his speech—this year—so safe for nonprofits, civic groups, and white-led institutions?

Are the power centers afraid of action-guided movements of repair, divestment, and justice?

Something is off.
Something racial is strikingly off.

#frederickdouglass #fourthofyoulie #mockery #hypermockery #symbolic #proactive #howtheremeberingisremembered #hhbbos #hhbbne