hi. i haven’t used this blog in a couple years but i just wanted to say something here because of the black lives matter movement, which is something i care about deeply. i am not Black, but i am a white person who believes deeply in racial equality and the abolishment of police. with that i want to say that, despite the extremely obsessive phase i went through when i was 12-13, i no longer support hamilton or what it stands for in any way shape or form.
you’re probably confused, because the cast is almost entirely people of color. let me explain. i no longer support hamilton for a couple of reasons:
1) the glorification of a country built on stolen land and created by slave owners is unacceptable and gross.
hamilton mentions nothing about the fact that the country it supposedly tells the story of was built on stolen land. it doesnt tell the story of the people it was stolen from. despite having a poc cast, the story it tells is a completely whitewashed version of the history of america. having a poc cast is not an excuse for this. if anything, it’s pandering, and a cheap way of deflecting criticism. sort of like saying “i have a black friend so i can’t be racist”.
america is not a country that deserves to be glorified in any way. america is built on racism, slavery, and the oppression of anyone who wasn’t an able bodied white man. thomas jefferson and george washington shouldn’t be anyone’s “uwu smol beans”. they were not good people. they were slave owners, they thrived off the oppression of Black people, and they saw Black people as their property. they saw human lives as something that they owned. thomas jefferson impregnated one of his fucking slaves when she was SIXTEEN, because legally, SHE WAS HIS PROPERTY. SLAVES HAD NO LEGAL RIGHT TO DENY SEXUAL ADVANCES FROM THEIR OWNERS BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT DID NOT SEE THEM AS PEOPLE. your “smol beans” were real people, real people who saw Black people as nothing but objects to be bought and sold. please think about that next time you’re listening to “washington on your side” or “right hand man”.
2) lin-manuel miranda is not a good person, and he has taken action to drastically and repeatedly affect puerto rico in extremely negative ways & with disasterous results.
if you want to learn more in depth about this, read this article, but some of what he’s done includes supporting a law that resulted in the closure of 200 public schools, less sick days and vacation days for workers, and raised college tuition which caused many low income students to drop out, he supported the rebuilding of the coffee industry after hurricane maría, and he is just generally disliked by most puerto ricans because, again, he wrote a musical that glorified america, a country which has oppressed and stolen from puerto rico for decades. he is not a person you should be supporting.
i know a lot of younger people are probably gonna be upset/offended by this post, and all i have to say is: i was you a couple years ago, and i loved hamilton to death. but in a year or 2 youll grow out of this phase, and a year after that youll look back and be really embarrassed that you supported something as terrible as hamilton. trust me, i know this post isn’t gonna change your mind. time is probably the only thing that will. but i just think that you should understand the backgrounds of the musical and people that you support.
black lives mattered then. black lives matter now. black lives matter forever.
