Natalie Coffman

“It was no wonder, then, that Dumas lost his temper when he read the official report of the battle, compiled by Napoleon’s aide-de-camp General Berthier, and saw that his role had been diminished to one of “in observation at San Antonio.” Berthier did include a phrase about Dumas’s fighting the enemy “well,” but this did nothing to make Alex Dumas reconsider what he was about to write into the official military record of the Army of Italy. Dumas picked up his quill and wrote to Napoleon a letter of such fantastical insolence it would be cited in every historical account of him as an example of his legendary temper: January 18, 1797 GENERAL, I have learned that the jack ass whose business it is to report to you upon the battle of the 27th [the 27 Nivôse, i.e., January 16] stated that I stayed in observation throughout that battle. I don’t wish any such observation on him, since he would have shit in his pants. Salute and Brotherhood! ALEX. DUMAS”
― Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

“Between the Stamp Act of 1765 and Lexington a decade later, one of the colonists’ most widespread tools of resistance against arbitrary taxation without representation was boycotting British imports, particularly luxury items. While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it’s worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped basil leaves in boiling water to make the same point. What’s more valiant: littering from a wharf or years of doing chores and looking after”
― Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

“The promise of the Church of Color Blindness is that if we stop seeing race, then racism goes away. That racism will go away not through awakening consciousness of privilege and racial harm, not through systemic and institutional change, not through addressing imbalances in power, not through making amends for historical and current-day harm, but instead by simply acting as if the social construct of race has no actual consequences—both for those with white privilege and those without it. The belief is that if you act as if you do not see color, you will not do anything racist or benefit from racism. And if you teach your children to not see race too, you can create a new generation of people who will not do anything racist or benefit from racism.”
― Layla F. Saad, Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

“what a person knows about the past is limited, and will always be limited, to what they are told by others.”
― Tara Westover, Educated