Look out! We'll getcha!
Last week we got a letter in the mail saying that our BlackLivesMatter yard signs were causing racial disharmony and that we'd lost a customer to Amazon. (I have more to say about how bassackwards that is, but for now, you can refer to this if you want.) (Mind, this is not the first person to claim that taking an anti-racist position is harmful. On Christmas Eve, a customer came in and spoke at our manager for upwards of ten minutes (on CHRISTMAS DAMN EVE) about how he didn't want to bring his children to the store anymore because he didn't feel that the message of BlackLivesMatter was appropriate for them. For his children. le sigh. But, there aren't that many people who have such terrible manners.)
One of the co-owners of the store decided to address the unsigned letter we received with a blog post that is thoughtful and personal and ends with a link to Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, because yes.
The DailyKos wrote up an article and someone in the comments made a GRAPHIC thing!?!
KMOX did a piece also - which is kind of awesome, for real.
The post landed at HuffPost. ?!?!?
(So you know to avoid the comments, right? I mean, you could read the ones at The DailyKos, because they are kind of fantastic and the ones on the Facebook page are mostly alright, too, but, you know, be careful.)
The Post wrote that we sold out of BlackLivesMatter signs. We're also selling a ton of Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book. Which is freaking fantastic. Not that I've bought it yet. Or anything. *coughs*
What you won't see in these links or articles is that a different kind of conversation is happening in the store. The conversation about realizing how real it is that the default setting for white people is racist. As someone who works not to be, it is still startling when I am approached by white people who use coded language or arguments that are steeped in an unquestioned racism. It is so shocking, not because I am shocked that people are racist, but because the assumption is that as a white person I am actively engaged in my racism and approve of it.
Um. No.
It took having it pointed out for me to learn that as a person who grew up with white privilege in this country, I am inherently racist. It was a twitchy moment, because I'm special, so of course I'm not racist. *cough* Yep.
It was an awkward moment when I realized that there is nothing about not being racist that makes my words unracist. Nothing at all.
Not my lack of intent. Not my less-privileged-than-you upbringing. Not my feminism.
Whatever my beliefs, my privilege (something I may not choose, but must not deny) is built from a system of oppression and subjugation predicated on the belief that white skinned people are better. It is not the job of POC to educate me about racism. It is not the job of WOC to teach me to be an intersectional feminist. It is my job to do the work and to have the conversations.
Sometimes it is necessary to preach to the choir, a thing that can get dicey when you work at a place where people are fairly certain you always agree with them no matter what. The illusion of a cultural monolith is not limited to any political party. Oh no.
Another Left Bank conversation that is compelling is that one that tracks the progress of understanding. The one where we compare notes about when we articulated our many and varied problems with the privileged and obtuse notion of colorblindness. The one where none of us had to articulate or defend our use of #BlackLivesMatter specifically, along with #TransLivesMatter and #NativeLivesMatter and #AllBlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName - because it was apparent that the specificity was necessary, because every life does not matter in practice. The one where we all wonder what else we need to learn. The one where the books on our shelves speak clearly.
It creeps, this burden of responsibility. It creeps into conversation. It creeps into buying habits. It creeps into the search for acceptable pop culture. It creeps into relationships. It takes over.
We have muscles. We must use them. History weighs heavily. The work of carrying its burden should fall on all of us.
Showing posts with label black lives matter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black lives matter. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2015
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Things that can Die in a Fire
This is a list. A list of things that can Die in a Fire.
It is not comprehensive. It may not even be explanatory.
Chivalry. Chivalry can die in a fire with its counterpart Street Harassment.
White ladies who use the word 'nice' to mean White and 'dangerous' to mean Black.
People touching other people's hair without their consent, perhaps without their knowledge. For real. Just that just needs to DIE IN A FIRE.
It is #BlackLivesMatter for a reason. Figure that reason out and just shut the fuck up with your AllLives and WhiteLives garbage.
"But it's my First Amendment Right." Fuck off. No, it isn't.
Bossy. Sassy. Note: these are 2 words that we thought maybe could just be put to bed so that we can all forget about how ill used they are now, but no, no. They must also die in a fire.
Meninism. Like. What. Even. Is. The. Thing. Here.
If you don't like to pay full price, don't throw the Amazon threat at the service person. Just throw your money at the giant cancerous blood-sucking void that is that online monstrosity, own it and shut up with your indignation. The schools you want to parent your children and the librarians you don't want to pay and the roads you want to be eternally in good repair lose money every time you value convenience over cost. You vote with your dollars. It is not the fault of the service person. It is your fault.
Anybody else have a thing they'd like to add?
Shoddy and harmful medical care. Believe me when I tell you a thing. This is not television and you are not mother-crapping House.
"Political correctness!" Look. Your words need to show respect. That is all. You not using racial epithets isn't a mark of weakness or collusion, it's how you show respect for another human being. Not telling jokes that glorify acts of violence and diminish the power of consent does not make you less funny. It makes you better at not being a lazy fucker who relies on infantile responses to gratify. You make it easier to dismiss you by speaking dismissively of others.
Suggesting that social media is somehow meaningless or ephemeral or fake ... How? How do you even not see the depth of communication that is possible across every geographic boundary that Mercator could have imagined? How do you pretend that violence in the ether is someone less? How do you willfully misinterpret the power of the Internet and its various forms of interpersonal interaction as empty and frivolous? Where is it not made plain that the connections forged on social media are what make the world less likely to stay shitty? Or is it just convenient to dismiss what's keeping social justice warriors in touch with each other and on the lookout for fuckups by you because otherwise you might have to change. Grow up. You will fight change. You always have.
It is not comprehensive. It may not even be explanatory.
Chivalry. Chivalry can die in a fire with its counterpart Street Harassment.
White ladies who use the word 'nice' to mean White and 'dangerous' to mean Black.
People touching other people's hair without their consent, perhaps without their knowledge. For real. Just that just needs to DIE IN A FIRE.
It is #BlackLivesMatter for a reason. Figure that reason out and just shut the fuck up with your AllLives and WhiteLives garbage.
"But it's my First Amendment Right." Fuck off. No, it isn't.
Bossy. Sassy. Note: these are 2 words that we thought maybe could just be put to bed so that we can all forget about how ill used they are now, but no, no. They must also die in a fire.
Meninism. Like. What. Even. Is. The. Thing. Here.
If you don't like to pay full price, don't throw the Amazon threat at the service person. Just throw your money at the giant cancerous blood-sucking void that is that online monstrosity, own it and shut up with your indignation. The schools you want to parent your children and the librarians you don't want to pay and the roads you want to be eternally in good repair lose money every time you value convenience over cost. You vote with your dollars. It is not the fault of the service person. It is your fault.
Anybody else have a thing they'd like to add?
Shoddy and harmful medical care. Believe me when I tell you a thing. This is not television and you are not mother-crapping House.
"Political correctness!" Look. Your words need to show respect. That is all. You not using racial epithets isn't a mark of weakness or collusion, it's how you show respect for another human being. Not telling jokes that glorify acts of violence and diminish the power of consent does not make you less funny. It makes you better at not being a lazy fucker who relies on infantile responses to gratify. You make it easier to dismiss you by speaking dismissively of others.
Suggesting that social media is somehow meaningless or ephemeral or fake ... How? How do you even not see the depth of communication that is possible across every geographic boundary that Mercator could have imagined? How do you pretend that violence in the ether is someone less? How do you willfully misinterpret the power of the Internet and its various forms of interpersonal interaction as empty and frivolous? Where is it not made plain that the connections forged on social media are what make the world less likely to stay shitty? Or is it just convenient to dismiss what's keeping social justice warriors in touch with each other and on the lookout for fuckups by you because otherwise you might have to change. Grow up. You will fight change. You always have.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Safe Spaces considered 1*
this is a contemplation that begins in the middle
I was listening to an episode of Another Round, one where the words "safe space" were spoken and I smiled and it was lovely to consider how to listen differently while listening to someone else's safe space and then something happened and the women began to laugh. They laughed like I laugh. I could not see them. I imagine that they laughed with full open mouths and mirth and the sound was joyfilled and overwhelming and something landed on my heart and I understood something I had only known.
Safe Space.
Two spaces immediately suggest themselves.
One is a reading group that was begun by a good friend of mine. We call it Feminists in Love because she found herself surrounded, almost cocooned, but lightly, by conversations about how feminists can experience loving relationships. What does that look like in friendship? What does that look like in romance? Is it different in a same-sex relationship than in a hetero-normative-seeming one?
The big question that I notice right in the middle like some radioactive nucleus is: how do you learn to love? What the hell happened that this has to be sought out and learned?
The patriarchy: that sex-negative, racist, sexist, imperialistic, economically parasitic system that we have is not sustained by full and complicated and varied relationships. It needs a power structure that is based on control of others. Others can only be controlled at the expense of compassion, respect, honor and flexibility. We score people based on how many lives they control. You get more points the more the people under your control are there unwillingly.
Not the best place for love, for celebration, for friendship. And yet. We find each other. We have always found each other. At the kitchen tables, around camp fires, on the way to the bathroom, in the breaths between giggles at socially accepted ladies' gatherings. We always find each other. Together we learn to carve out time for speaking out of code; for speaking honest and terrible thoughts about the lives we've been living and how we are not loved. We speak in sentences as heavy as weights, that we must practice carrying from hour to hour and day to day until we can meet again and share again and learn to carry more awareness until it is nothing to recognize the need to shift, to move, to understand. We teach each other to be resilient and we learn to learn from those whose burden includes us.
Last weekend, The Movement For Black Lives convened for the first time. They spent three days together in Cleveland Ohio and shared empowering, community building, healing and vital time with each other. Time that is sorely needed in communities that are tested and tried every day with news of another murder by police hands, another suspicious church fire, another hanging. This Safe Space is necessary and strengthening. This Safe Space is sacred.
They met, at the end, police with pepper spray trying to arrest a teenaged boy waiting at a bus stop. People came together and prevented the arrest. the young man was reunited with his family. Safe Space engenders compassion, respect and strength in action. Safe Spaces are places to learn and to discover how to grow. They heal and help the people involved in them.
When I was a girl, I did not participate in the things that brought me into women's spaces. Nothing in those spaces made room for the girl I was. I spent years crafting room for my friendships out of scraps of time and park benches and obsessive focus. I did not understand how to be safe in a room full of my peers. They did not understand how to be safe with me. It is different now.
I learn to listen.
*This blog post is numbered because I have latched onto an idea, and it will take more than a few paragraphs to explore it.
I was listening to an episode of Another Round, one where the words "safe space" were spoken and I smiled and it was lovely to consider how to listen differently while listening to someone else's safe space and then something happened and the women began to laugh. They laughed like I laugh. I could not see them. I imagine that they laughed with full open mouths and mirth and the sound was joyfilled and overwhelming and something landed on my heart and I understood something I had only known.
Safe Space.
Two spaces immediately suggest themselves.
One is a reading group that was begun by a good friend of mine. We call it Feminists in Love because she found herself surrounded, almost cocooned, but lightly, by conversations about how feminists can experience loving relationships. What does that look like in friendship? What does that look like in romance? Is it different in a same-sex relationship than in a hetero-normative-seeming one?
The big question that I notice right in the middle like some radioactive nucleus is: how do you learn to love? What the hell happened that this has to be sought out and learned?
The patriarchy: that sex-negative, racist, sexist, imperialistic, economically parasitic system that we have is not sustained by full and complicated and varied relationships. It needs a power structure that is based on control of others. Others can only be controlled at the expense of compassion, respect, honor and flexibility. We score people based on how many lives they control. You get more points the more the people under your control are there unwillingly.
Not the best place for love, for celebration, for friendship. And yet. We find each other. We have always found each other. At the kitchen tables, around camp fires, on the way to the bathroom, in the breaths between giggles at socially accepted ladies' gatherings. We always find each other. Together we learn to carve out time for speaking out of code; for speaking honest and terrible thoughts about the lives we've been living and how we are not loved. We speak in sentences as heavy as weights, that we must practice carrying from hour to hour and day to day until we can meet again and share again and learn to carry more awareness until it is nothing to recognize the need to shift, to move, to understand. We teach each other to be resilient and we learn to learn from those whose burden includes us.
Last weekend, The Movement For Black Lives convened for the first time. They spent three days together in Cleveland Ohio and shared empowering, community building, healing and vital time with each other. Time that is sorely needed in communities that are tested and tried every day with news of another murder by police hands, another suspicious church fire, another hanging. This Safe Space is necessary and strengthening. This Safe Space is sacred.
They met, at the end, police with pepper spray trying to arrest a teenaged boy waiting at a bus stop. People came together and prevented the arrest. the young man was reunited with his family. Safe Space engenders compassion, respect and strength in action. Safe Spaces are places to learn and to discover how to grow. They heal and help the people involved in them.
When I was a girl, I did not participate in the things that brought me into women's spaces. Nothing in those spaces made room for the girl I was. I spent years crafting room for my friendships out of scraps of time and park benches and obsessive focus. I did not understand how to be safe in a room full of my peers. They did not understand how to be safe with me. It is different now.
I learn to listen.
*This blog post is numbered because I have latched onto an idea, and it will take more than a few paragraphs to explore it.
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