Snacks exist to ease hunger between meals, but, snacks are not a meal. Snacks aren’t the healthiest of foods; loaded with sugar, salt and fat, the holy trinity of addictive foods, rather than easing hunger, snacks fuel bad health. History and news have become snacks. People don’t readily embrace long form reporting and more complex history; but a cute kitten video or a clip of someone behaving badly readily shows up in our text feeds.
The news has become snacks. History has become snacks. The issue, we’re existing on snacks and never get to the meals and it’s not healthy. In terms of news, a story is typically between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Two minutes maximum! So in 30 minutes of news, you have gotten anywhere between 15 to 60 different stories. That is snack time for sure. By comparison, we spend more time listening to a song and lyrics than we watch one news story. The problem is people think and act like they’re knowledgeable based on news bites
This week is the Juneteenth holiday. The snack size version is, June 19th 1865 is date when all the enslaved were free after the civil war. The reality is the war was over and Texas refused to accept the results. Point blank period. Oh, the enslaved knew they were free, but what could they do? Texas was gangster, false imprisonment of over 250,000 people with no recourse. The story is presented as bite size (BS):
Fannie Lou Hammer
The Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, though word of the edict would not officially reach Texas for another two and half years — June 19, 1865.
“…officially reach?”
THINK. For 2.5 years, Texas thought a war was still going on? Sanitized history. The military had to march in, read the edict and enforce the order. Bite off that snack. The US postal system was established in 1775. The railway system was established in 1827 and train service to Texas started in 1853. Texas was not an inaccessible land mass. So there is no way Texans did not know of the Emancipation Proclamation from January 1, 1863.
This week consider bite size and maybe opt for right size. Hangry was a popular term a couple of years ago to describe a mood being hungry to the point of anger. For me, Hangry is History and Angry. I’m hangry that we sanitize history and don’t learn from it. Instead, we perpetuate myths that is dangerous to the health of democracy and justice. You may not be the one to champion the history and facts behind Juneteenth, but consider that today’s news will be tomorrow’s history, is your contribution a meal or a snack.
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 