Part I: Critical Habits
I recalled Jimmy Boggs’ insistence that “blacks are locked in the concept of racism.” It’s “the most devastating thing that ever happened to us,” he used to say. Instead of seeing it as “a challenge to take us to another plateau, it has become an excuse for why we can’t do anything.”
- Grace Lee BoggsToday, we have to take a step forward…and ask: Who is the emergent here? And we will see, every time, the narrative of class mobility.
- Gayatri SpivakIt may be a controversial thing to say, but here goes: the anti-capitalism that emerged out of the Occupy movement made a lot of self-identified people of color (PoC), myself included, anxious. So anxious, I think, that the validity of what quickly became stock PoC critiques of Occupy—which targeted everything from the whiteness of the movement to the problematic use of the term “Occupy” on land that is already genocidally occupied—also became ways of avoiding critical confrontation with our own responses to (and often direct dismissal of) what was (is? has been?) a pretty rare moment of mass mobilization in this country, a moment of mass mobilization that could have turned out differently. PoC critique soon became meme-like: it ceased functioning as a vehicle to carry generative ideas or intentions for confronting the problems we diagnosed, and its production and circulation quickly became an end in itself.
Along the way, many of the critiques soon became ahistorical. In one PoC collective meeting I attended, I heard it said more than once that occupation was an “inherently racist” tactic, a statement at which one wonders what the hell those folks in the American Indian Movement or those black students at Willard Straight Hall could have been thinking?! And with that, Irony 101: in the rush to critique and, by critiquing, to dismiss, the language and tactics of occupation as inherently racist, we participate in the erasure of our “own” radical histories. Such histories, if used instead as a resource, might just as easily have been a way of organizing ourselves to embrace occupation as a tactic of the oppressed, and toward a strategy toward building the kind of collective momentum we might want (or learn to want) with and from each other.
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From pritheworld:
Today on The World: The attention being paid to the two Tsarnaev brothers raises important questions about assimilation.
Researchers have found that immigrants who arrive here as children or teens often have a tough adjustment. If they came from a region beset by war, their challenges are even greater.
A fresh look at immigrant students and how they become Americans, next time on The World.
This raises a very interesting—and controversial!—question: Can xenophobia “radicalize” minorities?
My own experience, as a young immigrant (I came here when I was almost 10) suggests that this might be true. I was lucky, I spoke fluent English (my mother was an American who was living overseas when she married my father, a Bolivian). But it took me several years to acculturate to becoming “American” in the same way as my peers (I didn’t use contractions when I spoke for the first two years I was here, for example).
In the end, I was torn. Half of me set out to become as “American” as possible. I devoured American pop culture (to this day I have a firmer grasp of pop culture than my wife, a native Chicagoan, does). And so did many of immigrant friends. And it was the little things that made the biggest difference. My friend Bay recounts how she didn’t feel “American” until she could order a veggie cheeseburger from a fast food restaurant (as an observant Israeli Jew, she ate kosher).
But I also became ardently Bolivian, and probably in a way I might not have been had I stayed in Bolivia. I even remember in sixth grade being taunted and beat up by two class bullies (ironically, African-Americans) because of my foreignness. My response: I stood with my fists clenched and crying and started signing the Bolivian national anthem. For years, I would look away from the national flag at sporting events or graduation commencements when the anthem was sung.
And so I’ve remained. I’ve had times when I’ve become much more American than Bolivia, and then times when the pendulum has shifted. But I’m also lucky. I “look” “American” (unless you see my name written out, I could pass for a white American male pretty easily). I also speak with a fluent American (midwestern) accent. But I’m also really good at spotting accents and code switching. After all, my first task as a 10 year was to figure out how to fit in, how to assimilate, how to infiltrate mainstream culture. I got really good at it.
Hence, my first reaction when I started learning about the Tsarnaev brothers: I suspected that how they were treated by other Americans (both in their daily lives and—perhaps more importantly—in the broader media narrative) probably contributed to their radicalization. In the end, my personal gut feeling is that what the Tsarnaev boys did has more to do with their experience living in America than about their ethnic background.
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Gradient Lair: A Note To Some Feminist Black Men - Though bell hooks Is Exquisite, There's More To Black Feminism Than bell hooks
bell hooks is one of the most exquisite, thoughtful, complex, intellectual, and compassionate Black feminist scholars of our time. She’s often the doorway to Black feminist thought for Black feminists, whether women or men, and even White feminists who seek to move beyond the writing of “mainstream” feminists and begin to commit to intersectional feminist scholarship. Her writing is probing and thoughtful and while like all writing, not above critique, it really helped to form part of the foundation of a lot of modern feminist scholarship. I’ve read quite a few of her books, essays, papers and have seen videos of her talks. I quote her often as well. She’s brilliant.
I also know that there is more to Black feminist thought than bell hooks alone. I sometimes wonder if some feminist Black men do.
I know that look that they get—that moment when they first start to realize that patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity are constructs and not fixed or “natural” ways of being. Some start to embrace the concept of anti-sexism and anti-homophobia and not just anti-racism. This is good. They read The Will To Change - Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks. They read We Real Cool - Black Men and Masculinity by bell hooks. They start to listen to Black women and consider Black women as truly human even beyond the idea of their connection to men as mom/sister/daughter/GF/wife. This is also good. But this only scratches the surface.
I know that “entry into Black feminism” look and vigor too. My pathway to womanist thought was via The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which I first read when I was 12. My mind was blown. Here was a complex portrait of Black girlhood/womanhood beyond the White gaze and shaped by a Black woman. Here was multiple depictions of Black womanhood with depth and complexity and challenging INTRARACIAL oppression of Black women in addition to interracial oppression. (At such a young age I was already force-fed the idea that intraracial oppression was non-existent—that racism was evil but that intraracial sexism, homophobia, misogynoir and colourism, for example, were “right” or “natural.”) This was new to me on paper though at this age, I was already experiencing street harassment by Black men yet faced racist and sexist oppression at school and intraracial sexist and misongyoirist oppression at church. I lived intersectionality long before I knew of it ideologically. My life changed forever after reading more of her writing. Another pivotal moment for me was when I first heard Queen Latifah’s song “U.N.I.T.Y.” as a freshman in high school. That song is a true womanist epistle. (I didn’t get into Toni Morrison until high school and bell hooks until undergrad for example, where her writing was like an adult doorway into more feminist thought; even so, I embraced Alice Walker first.)
Thus, I don’t dismiss that initial entrance or that book, concepts and/or person that causes an internal paradigm shift for a womanist/feminist. But even at 12 I knew (though I couldn’t articulate it at this level yet) that no one person should be treated as a mascot for Black feminist thought or have Black feminist thought affected by essentialism where any one person becomes what the theory and praxis is about. Even bell hooks would not want that and alludes to this in her writing.
When Black men reduce Black feminist thought to one author and need that to be their go to author, there’s a problem. Sure, we can all have authors/writers that we love (such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Davis, Sikivu Hutchinson and yep, bell hooks are for me) but Black feminist thought is not solely about famous names. Feminist praxis is not solely about pasting quotes from bell hooks on Twitter. Feminist writing is not only what is on Amazon from a formal publisher by the few who even get to that level of platform.
Anytime I challenge Black men who are interested in feminist scholarship to READ MORE and LEARN MORE than just bell hooks or even primarily bell hooks, I receive pushback. They go full into male privilege or bust mode. Some suggest that since she specifically addresses men at times, she’s “better.” Um…doesn’t this sound like Whites who need a White character (and even worse, a “hero”) in a Black novel before they can care or “relate” to the story? Privilege much? If they need a man on the cover of a book or masculinity and nothing else addressed in feminist scholarship, their feminism is not intersectional; they’re basically engaging in a reductionist approach, viewing feminist scholarship in print as elaborate self-help books and little more. Feminism cannot solely be about them proving how they’re “good” men. While I do believe that how we embody the oppressor within is where all feminist work begins, I also know that feminism is not about me “proving” how “good” of a woman I am.
The reality is if a feminist Black man cannot care about feminist scholarship unless they feel the writing is specifically for men only, or centered on masculinity from how they perform it versus how it impacts Black women, children, families and themselves, there’s a problem. This is not progressive. There is more to intersectional feminism than solely considerations of gender. Their feminism needs to be intersectional. While critiques about patriarchy are critical, where is their understanding of White supremacy, racism, sexism, colorism, misogynoir, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, and more? It’s one thing to be new on the path and journey of feminism and simply not have embraced these topics…yet (though oppression is intersectional, so to only study patriarchy and masculinity without other axes of oppression is missing something huge). It’s another to assume that they have all of the answers to Black feminist thought because they are men who sometimes challenge patriarchal thinking and found a favorite author.
A commitment to justice is MORE than about how they can personally be less patriarchal in their personal lives. It’s more than them reading and citing her books daily and then retreating to male privilege to either heavily critique women who haven’t embraced feminism at all yet (I loathe this; it’s like White atheists telling Black theists to reject theism because of slavery) or ignoring calls for them to check their male privilege by feminist Black women. Black men who engage in essentialism with bell hooks run the risk of doing what Whites do with anti-racism study by reading/quoting MLK and little to no one else. (This holds a special irony since Black women’s contributions to Civil Rights work is heavily marginalized/ignored by Whites and Black men quite often.) Doing this makes their profound work caricatures and gimmicks instead of tools to deconstruct and fight oppression.
The worst of all is the attitude that I’ve received from some feminist Black men—as if I should be “desperately” thankful for their existence and endlessly and daily applaud them for not being misogynist. Excuse me for not creating thrones—I could’ve sworn that’s something that occurs amidst patriarchal thinking, not anti-oppression, intersectional feminist thinking. The thing is, I do talk to feminist Black men, read their writing, share important dialogue and more. I recognize when they’re doing something interesting. I won’t worship them, however, any more than I will Whites engaged in anti-racism work. I won’t praise anything they do over those with the lived experience of the form of oppression they’re against. If an ally requires worship to be an ally, they aren’t an ally. Ally work needs to be noble without the incessant need for the praise of its nobility, otherwise it becomes about oppressed people applauding their oppressors, which is not revolutionary.
In the same way that I expect White feminists not to engage in essentialist thinking of Gloria Steinem, I expect feminist Black men not to engage in essentialist thinking of bell hooks. While the journey into Black feminist thought by Black men matters deeply, intellectual laziness, essentialism, a lack of commitment to intersectional thinking/complete commitment to justice and male privilege will not be ignored, at least by me. -
An ethnicity does not indicate any sort of defined motive or ties to any possible group or groups and law enforcement has yet to provide any confirmation of the current reporting. Chechen groups also have traditionally focused their ire on Russia rather than targeting the United States. Finally, given their lengthy residence it is difficult to discern what — if any — ties or sympathies the two brothers have to Chechen terrorist groups. The older of the brothers — Tamerlan Tsarnaev — has been in the United States since as early as 1992 as a refugee and in 2002 hoped to box for the United States at the Salt Lake City Olympics.
— ThinkProgress’ Hayes Brown, reminding everyone that what we think we know is still only speculation, (via cognitivedissonance) -
I think the way America is set up makes it really difficult for people of different races, particularly white people and black people, to connect. There’s such a segregation, and not just in the way people live, but in the way people think about race […] but there’s no such thing as colour blindness, I think that to insist on colour-blindness is somehow to refuse to engage, because skin-colour really affects the way people experience the world and we can’t deny that
—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in Interview with Jon Snow, Channel 4 News, Wednesday 10th April 2013
I love Jon Snow but he really asks some whack questions on this one.
(via derica) -
![tal9000:
[Image: The face of an African woman from Roman Britain, as reconstructed by the below-discussed archaeological techniques, with a neutral expression]
allecto:
eatoncrow:
lilpocketninja:
missfolly:
New forensic techniques in archaeology reveal existence of high status Africans living in 4th Century AD York
“A picture of multi-cultural Britain in 4th Century AD has been revealed using the latest forensic techniques in archaeology. The new research, published in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, demonstrates that Roman York of the period had individuals of North African descent moving in the highest social circles.
Dr Hella Eckardt, Senior Lecturer at the University of Reading, said: “Multi-cultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and others like her, contradicts common popular assumptions about the make up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants in Roman Britain were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves.”
“To date, we have had to rely on evidence of such foreigners in Roman Britain from inscriptions. However, by analysing the facial features of the Ivory Bangle Lady and measuring her skull compared to reference populations, analysing the chemical signature of the food and drink she consumed, as well as evaluating the evidence from the burial site, we are now able to establish a clear profile of her ancestry and social status.
“It helps paint a picture of a Roman York that was hugely diverse and which included among its population, men, women and children of high status from Romanised North Africa and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.”
The ancestry assessment suggests a mixture of ‘black’ and ‘white’ ancestral traits, and the isotope signature indicates that she may have come from somewhere slightly warmer than the UK. Taken together with the evidence of an unusual burial rite and grave goods, the evidence all points to a high status incomer to Roman York. It seems likely that she is of North African descent, and may have migrated to York from somewhere warmer, possibly the Mediterranean.
The Ivory Bangle Lady was a high status young woman who was buried in Roman York (Sycamore Terrace). Dated to the second half of the fourth century, her grave contains jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants, beads, a blue glass jug and a glass mirror. The most famous object from this burial is a rectangular openwork mount of bone, possibly from an unrecorded wooden casket, which reads ‘Hail, sister, may you live in God’, indicating Christian beliefs.”
Dear Merlin fandom…
Dear fantasy authors who squawk about there being no PoCs in Dark Ages and Medieval Europe: In. Your. Stupid. Face.
She looks like a gray-eyed Gina Torres.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0wj4vAQgh1qb8vzto1_1280.jpg)
[Image: The face of an African woman from Roman Britain, as reconstructed by the below-discussed archaeological techniques, with a neutral expression]
New forensic techniques in archaeology reveal existence of high status Africans living in 4th Century AD York
“A picture of multi-cultural Britain in 4th Century AD has been revealed using the latest forensic techniques in archaeology. The new research, published in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, demonstrates that Roman York of the period had individuals of North African descent moving in the highest social circles.
Dr Hella Eckardt, Senior Lecturer at the University of Reading, said: “Multi-cultural Britain is not just a phenomenon of more modern times. Analysis of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ and others like her, contradicts common popular assumptions about the make up of Roman-British populations as well as the view that African immigrants in Roman Britain were of low status, male and likely to have been slaves.”
“To date, we have had to rely on evidence of such foreigners in Roman Britain from inscriptions. However, by analysing the facial features of the Ivory Bangle Lady and measuring her skull compared to reference populations, analysing the chemical signature of the food and drink she consumed, as well as evaluating the evidence from the burial site, we are now able to establish a clear profile of her ancestry and social status.
“It helps paint a picture of a Roman York that was hugely diverse and which included among its population, men, women and children of high status from Romanised North Africa and elsewhere in the Mediterranean.”
The ancestry assessment suggests a mixture of ‘black’ and ‘white’ ancestral traits, and the isotope signature indicates that she may have come from somewhere slightly warmer than the UK. Taken together with the evidence of an unusual burial rite and grave goods, the evidence all points to a high status incomer to Roman York. It seems likely that she is of North African descent, and may have migrated to York from somewhere warmer, possibly the Mediterranean.
The Ivory Bangle Lady was a high status young woman who was buried in Roman York (Sycamore Terrace). Dated to the second half of the fourth century, her grave contains jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants, beads, a blue glass jug and a glass mirror. The most famous object from this burial is a rectangular openwork mount of bone, possibly from an unrecorded wooden casket, which reads ‘Hail, sister, may you live in God’, indicating Christian beliefs.”
Dear Merlin fandom…
Dear fantasy authors who squawk about there being no PoCs in Dark Ages and Medieval Europe: In. Your. Stupid. Face.
She looks like a gray-eyed Gina Torres.
(via craftastrophies)
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“It is, I think, a properly angry essay,” writes Atlantic editor-in-chief James Bennet at the beginning of the September issue, referring to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article on President Obama. Coates’s article — called “Fear of a Black President” — looks back at Obama’s 2008 campaign, and his pledge to reckon with race.
In this conversation with Atlantic magazine editor Scott Stossel, Coates admits to a certain anger simmering behind these words, and explores his complex feelings about the president’s position on race.
This video seems to me as important as the article TNC wrote. Seriously, everybody needs to get on his level. TNC might be one of our most important thinkers on what Barack Obama is and why.
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Anxious Attachments: Scattered Thoughts on “People of Color,” Class Disavowal, and the Limits of “Racism”*
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The Daily Duh
(from the New Yorker, June 18, 2012, p. 28)
Like Bloomberg’s dumb-ass war on residential smoking, his war on soda represents yet another example of a cowardly politician pretending to address a problem by going after consumers, so it looks like they’re doing something, instead of addressing the structural issues that produce that problem in the first place. Excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and sugar is a symptom of the obesity epidemic. It is not the cause of the obesity epidemic. The only way to address the problem is to change the economic structures that make the epidemic not only possible but profitable.
I have absolutely no formal training in economics, in politics, or in public policy. How is it that something so painfully obvious could escape professionally-trained experts who are, presumably, advising Bloomberg? I’m willing to bet that the answer is - it doesn’t. I’m only speculating, of course, but I’ve spent enough time in and around government to make an educated guess.
What happens is, your boss is a scary billionaire who thinks he’s a king. Your boss says to you, “I want to do something about obesity in New York City.” Now, if you’ve ever been an aide or adviser to a politician, you know that when a politician says “I want to do something about this,” what they mean isn’t “I want to fix this problem” but rather “I want to push through a policy initiative that will make it looklike I did something by the time I leave office.” No politician is interested in setting up a success story for someone else to reap - they want the advantage on their CV in real time. So, as Bloomberg’s aide, what are you going to do? Are you going to walk into his office and say “Sir, the obesity problem is a small part of a huge national economic structure that can’t possibly be addressed successfully on a local level”? No, of course not. You’re going to invent some idiotic policy that will sound and look convincing, something that lends it self to a photo op and a 24-hour news cycle in a way that “national economic structure” just doesn’t: for example, you put your politician in front of a giant jug of soda from KFC, and then put a tiny, classy size of soda in his hand, and you say “See? Any reasonable person can see the difference we’ve made! You used to be able to drink this much soda. Now you can only drink this much soda!”
If possible, you want to design your policy so that it affects as many people as possible (for statistical purposes) but also so that as few of the affected people as possible can fight back, resist, or complain. Where can you most easily find such a population? Among poor people of color, of course. Boom. The boss is happy, the aides are happy, the press is happy, the upper-middle-class white people who read the New Yorker are happy. Who isn’t happy? Oh, you know. Only the people that the initiative is supposed to be helping - but the very concept and language of the initiative makes it clear that these people don’t know what’s good for them and can’t be trusted to make their own choices in the first place, so of course they’re going to be unhappy.
In short, the ethical problem here is not unlike the aporia highlighted by Gayatri Spivak’s brilliant formula “White men are saving brown women from brown men.” You can’t create a cure if you don’t understand the cause of the disease.
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For Anyone Who Was Wondering
“In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.
(14) Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs, especially in positions at the interface with the general public—corporate sales reps, TV news presenters, press officers for government agencies, etc.—with corresponding depletion in less visible positions. There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs, for reasons given in the previous paragraph and also (next paragraph) as status markers.
(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history. Try to curb your envy: it will be taken as prejudice (see paragraph 13).”
That article was indeed quite racist! I did not cry, but I did have that hollow feeling in your chest, like when the wind is knocked out of you but also your heart is gone and you’re not sure you’ll ever breathe again, and maybe you don’t want too. That is not a pleasant feel, bro!
Though it does send me to this uncomfortable place of wondering how many people I know who feel that way, deep down, or maybe not so deep. I’ve been told to my face that “I’m not one of them,” and that I’m “different,” in those exact words and as subtext, which is also a terrible feel. Because you know what. My family are “those types of people.” My friends are. People I know and love, and know more about who I am and where I come from, are not “IWSBs” and they still manage to be good wonderful people who deserve to reach the heights of felicity. I take stupid articles like this very personally, because it is. fucking. personal. When they say “black people,” they are talking about me, and my family and my loved ones, and I love the ability to compartmentalize like anyone who has googled upsetting things on the internet, but, Christ.
This is like people who look me in the face and ask if I’m related to Dick Cheney. Nope, but I am statistically more likely to steal your bag!
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At Last has become arguably the most popular song in the U.S. for weddings, Valentine’s Day, or other kinds of bourgeois events calling for cheap sentimentality—despite the fact that James’s powerhouse vocals and phrasing actively work against the sentimentality of the song’s arrangement, as it does in most of her work covering jazz standards during that period.
But her vocals weren’t the only place James was working decidedly against a safe “jazz singer” image. She worked in her personal life and her styling to embody the kind of black urban street culture in which she was immersing herself:
“I [was] serious about turning little churchgoing Jamesetta into a tough bitch called Etta James…. I wanted to look like a great big high-yellow ho’. I wanted to be nasty.”
James ascribes the blonde-yellow hair and black eyebrows that she adopted early in her career to being closely associated with street-based sex workers and drag queens at the time. That’s who she was emulating.
— From Kenyon Farrow’s insightful Political Obituary of Etta James, Colorlines, 1/24/12 (via racialicious)
