"“Brown Girl Dreaming” is the story of my family, moving from slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, and ends with me as a child of the ’70s. It is steeped in the history of not only my family but of America. As African-Americans, we were given this history daily as weapons against our stories’ being erased in the world or, even worse, delivered to us offhandedly in the form of humor...
To know that we African-Americans came here enslaved to work until we died but didn’t die, and instead grew up to become doctors and teachers, architects and presidents — how can these children not carry this history with them for those many moments when someone will attempt to make light of it, or want them to forget the depth and amazingness of their journey?
How could I come from such a past and not know that I am on a mission, too?"
Yes. These kinds of moments are hard to grapple with, because to understand why they are so offensive the "joker" sort of needs to be re-educated in history from the perspective that there are people around them who have to think about the ugliest parts everyday, every time they think about their families. It's real that a lot of people who don't do that thinking can't really understand why something is offensive, and are offended by people who find them offensive - and I can only be glad that the guy who made this joke made an actual apology that wasn't mostly about how annoying all the offended people are.
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