Some white folk have deemed the study of Black life and history uninteresting. Some whites claim it is irrelevant to the larger American narrative, arguing that Black folk didn't have much to do with shaping the events of our history. Some whites were never taught a sense of Black achievement in class or at home. Others are unapologetically anti-Black and disdain the study of Black life. Still others boast a negative literacy about Black life, what might be called an ill-literacy, in which the point of studying Black life is to take measure of its supposed social corruption and moral depravity -- to prove through myopic statistics that Black folk are plagued by greater social pathology, commit more crime, are less interested in education, don't behave well in public, are psychologically toxic and intellectually inferior, have dysfunctional family structures, ruin neighborhoods with their questionable values, and deserve their low status in society.
-- Michael Eric Dyson, Long Time Coming, p. 189
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