I have seen many people engage in this kind of discourse EVEN Black people— the narrative of Birth of Nation has never really died…
Certain social media commentators have stated that the erasure via removal of African American history from the U.S. cultural archive is a salutary corrective, ostensibly dispelling collective “delusions” about structural inequities. This raises a critical question—why is the charge of delusion—of misapprehending systemic power dynamics—disproportionately levied at Black communities, whose historical and material conditions are inextricably tied to legacies of dispossession? By contrast, dominant demographics—particularly white men—remain insulated from comparable scrutiny, despite their frequent engagement with ideological constructs that naturalize hegemony.
The asymmetry here is instructive, at least for me.
Hegemonic power structures thrive not merely through overt coercion but through the cultivation of epistemic complacency among those least vulnerable to systemic disenfranchisement.