‘I’m Outraged About the Cultural Disease That Spawned This Tweet’

At the Rumpus, Roxane Gay wrote the best thing in response to the jokes about Quvenzhané Wallis. You really must read it: “I’m not outraged about this one tweet. I’m outraged about the cultural disease that spawned this tweet, the one where certain people are devalued and denigrated for sport and then told to laugh it off because hey, you know, it’s humor.”

The solution to the cultural disease — diversity: “People often fail to understand the importance of diversity. They assume it’s all about quotas and political correction but it is about so much more. Diversity (and we’re talking race, class, gender, sexuality, political affiliation, religion, all of it) is about putting multiple points of view into a conversation. It’s about ensuring that no one is operating in the kind of cultural vacuum where they don’t stop to consider context. “

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