• The webinar did not address how disinformation uniquely targets African-Americans and why this is important.
• Two ways that African-Americans have been profoundly targeted by disinformation: The question of “Phillis Wheatley” and “Nat Turner”
• Anti-blackness and our lack of empathy for the African-American experience.
• Why fiction literacy is relevant to real-life problem-solving.
• How African dramatic form (ADF) can be used to solve real-life problems, such as anti-Blackness.
• Using “other groups” to deny African-Americans justice and its connection to anti-Blackness.

This morning, I attended, “Disinformation, Midterms, and the Mind,” hosted by The National Press Club Journalism Institute, the American Psychological Association, and Pen America. 

The panel discussed studies about how disinformation is spread, habits around disinformation, and how to combat disinformation, which ranged from possibly launching a social engagement button labeled “misinformation” — that a user can also select among “like, love, and care,” on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter — to content creators simply anticipating what the disinformation will be and addressing that disinformation in advance so that populations are “inoculated” with “comebacks” when the disinformation starts.

I should add here that this is, first, not going to solve the problem of disinformation, and second, simply a return to good rhetorical writing, where you anticipate and address counter-arguments as part of the build of your story or essay…guided by your intended audience.

My general thoughts on this are that Black people have been uniquely targeted for disinformation since before their arrival in this land, and it has become a model for how other “undesirable” groups are targeted (the “reverse freedom rides” used by governors in Arizona, Texas, and Florida to transport migrants awaiting immigration hearings north are a recent example of this — American Indian Boarding Schools are another example; they were created to more politely accomplish with American Indians what enslavement had accomplished with Negroes).

African-Americans, in particular, have been used in disinformation campaigns to such depth that the likely fictional figures created within this have become part of our literal bloodlines. Nat Turner and his confessions are believed to have been a disinformation campaign around a general increase in slave uprisings that slavers should come together to put down; and before that, Phillis Wheatley is believed to have been created to explore the capacity of African intellect to be “at the level” of whites — Blackness and anti-Blackness exist in both instances merely as a tool for white interests and outcomes but profoundly impact and inform African-American legacies and identities.

The solutions presented for disinformation by these organizations did not understand how Blacks in America are uniquely targeted and how the failure to properly confront and address anti-Blackness in our social systems and collective psyche is why we all continue in this situation.

For example, a “misinformation” button on a post about Black experience is going to be up-voted by white conservatives; then white liberals, wanting to parse information “fairly”; and then Black folks, who are socialized to anti-Black disinformation, and so, want to come off as “reasonable” in ways that are inclusive of general white skepticism; so the truth of the original post will be delayed for 25-50 years, at best, as it waits for white inclusive imagination to catch up, if ever.

The only relevant solution presented at this panel appears to be ’empathy for the party under attack.’

This would require a depth and fullness of empathy with the African-American experience (not simply Black people) that is not presently possible in our collective imagination.

Why not?

I use a story development tool called African dramatic form (ADF) to edit stories and for what I call, “fiction literacy.”  A central idea of ADF is to “answer the question” or “solve the problem” mid-story, and then address the questions and problems that arise from this solution toward your fiction’s conclusion. What the author (or narrator, if intentional) sees as the new question, or problem, created by the mid-story solution can betray what is truly the obstacle to solving the mid-story question. 

If we cannot solve the problem of anti-blackness, in theory even, to generate the necessary follow-up questions, which imagine a world without anti-Blackness, because a singular and unique Black Justice is simply not conscionable (what about “this” or “that” group?), what does this say?

If we use these “other groups” to prevent Black Justice, but we do not give these “other groups” to the condition of anti-Blackness — which is to say, we give them empathy at least — what does that mean?

The mind is always trying to live. It is always trying to create a story beyond the next threat or obstacle — It has been said that this is why humans created an afterlife.

So, if we are being told that there is no existence beyond anti-Blackness, it means that we have given the question of anti-Blackness to minds that are essentially anti-Black.

I am reluctant to say that a lack of empathy specifically for African-Americans comes simply from “everyone” feeling guilty about what’s happened because we do not deny American Indians this empathy while very clearly and plainly living on the land from which they were displaced.

No one complains about the existence of a Bureau of Indians (except for American Indians not getting their things). No one complains when American Indians get free tuition. But the thought of African-Americans –indeed, descendants of people restricted from even the self-effacing, culturally genocidal education forced upon American Indians– getting free tuition is an outrage because…What about the American Indians?

I am more inclined to think — along the lines of this country’s “original” thinking — that confronting anti-blackness, and particularly our willful ignorance regarding disinformation and the lack of justice for African-Americans, makes us “uncomfortable” because of the personal responsibility it requires when African-Americans are simply not “human” enough to be worth it. We are intended to be the cost of freedom –If we accept the mission.

I am simply not willing to accept and let that be.

These thoughts were shared with the webinar hosts: National Press Club, American Psychological Association, and Pen America. You can find their replay here. — And why are the “Debunking Handbooks” only in European languages?