These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.
These are stolen lands built by stolen people
“Identities are no longer sacred. Are we ready to admit this now?”
Election purgatory is over. The United States has elected Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President. By selecting Biden-Harris, we have managed as a country to stop the hemorrhaging, but we are still very much in the ICU, and we require major surgery and rehabilitation and guess what? We do not have insurance. #ThisisUS
So we have a new administration, a centrist and a very reformist one. Now what?
For those of us who are serious about social justice, anti-racism, and freedom that far exceeds liberal notions and electoral politics, we already know that we have lots of work. The conditions of our work have changed, but our demands have not. Our strategies may have changed, but our vision for the future has not. It is important to note that there is a growing faction of the Democratic Party that is progressive, not just in name but in praxis. There is also a very Left contingency that struggles to create a viable Leftist movement in the United States. On a federal level, the ticket does not represent this burgeoning bloc that crosses race, ethnicity, class, and geography. The Clintonian, Pelosi, Obama, Clyburn, and 94’ Crime Bill Democrats must move to the Left if they want to be in political solidarity with most of the party. This election cycle may be the last one where the Democrats, mentioned above, can exert their power and force a moderate on the national ticket.
Representation, reform, fake civility, and status quo is not justice!
An anti-racist, anti-fascist, working-class coalition came together to make this victory happen. This coalition centered the collective a courtesy not afforded to this same coalition. Black people showed up for a nation that still refuses to absorb us fully into its body politic. Indigenous folks showed up to vote for a nation-state that is currently enacting colonial violence upon them and ignoring their treaties. Once again, Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous folks have proven that there is no hope for the future if we are not the architects and engineers of these future(s).
As I type this, Trump has not conceded, and there appears to be no real sign that Trumpism has receded either.
President-elect Biden and many of his supporters are making loud and bold claims about healing. There can be no healing if there is not, first and foremost, a reckoning. Merely having a democratic presidency does not translate to healing and better material conditions for those this country makes vulnerable. Let us never forget that Black Lives Matter came to be under the presidency of the first Black Democratic President. Black people of conscience argued, organized, marched, defended the first Black family, critiqued the Obama administration over its stunning and staggering deportation numbers, and rolled our eyes when Obama would make classist anti-Black remarks about Pookie n’em. Black people did not go to brunch under the Obama presidency, and I hope the anti-racist faction does not go to brunch either just because your candidate won.
As we are performing the postmortem on the election, there are some key things that we must confront and contend with if we are going to move forward together in a good way.
The one major lesson to be learned in this election cycle is that the election of president-elect Joe Biden was not a repudiation of Trump. Meaning the people did not reject Trump wholesale on the contrary, he energized and gained new voters. His racism, lies, mismanagement of the coronavirus, and telling the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ appealed to many Americans. Seventy- million people voted for Donald Trump. I am deeply concerned by this number and how these numbers will unfold in our human interactions and relationships over the next four years.
The second major thing we should concern ourselves with is with the question of who, who are the people who voted for Trump?
The best place to start will be with the New York Times Exit Polls the pictures above highlight three essential things: the amount of suburban white women who voted for Trump went up, the number of Black people who voted for Trump went up, and the amount of LGBTQ folks who voted for Trump went up.
I think it is important to note that this was a small sampling of people, and therefore, we must be prudent in the ways we interpret these numbers. With that said, the numbers do tell a story. All of these groups voting for Trumpism further solidifies one of the many truisms that I often verbalize, which is that identities are not sacred. What does this mean? It means that being Black, a white woman, being an immigrant, or gay is not necessarily a prerequisite for rejecting Trumpism.
The results prove that Democrats can no longer say that the GOP cannot attract new voters or people of color. Many different bodies and identities will show up and make themselves available if the right dog whistles are used. Our neighbors, colleagues, pediatrician, butcher, nanny, mailperson, or our favorite play auntie is far more homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, classist, racist, anti-Black, and is more of an anti-abortion zealot than you think. White supremacy has no issue with practicing multiculturalism for the sake of maintaining white supremacy.
Knowing this, what will it look like for us to live with our fellow United State-ians for the next four years? Are we ready for the 2024 backlash? As we get closer to the holiday season, what strategies do we have to engage our Trump-voting family members? (Because everyone has one no matter your race and ethnicity). We must build and expand our anti-racist and anti-fascist coalition if we make a significant change in this country. The people who want to defund the police, secure medicare for all, forgive student loan debt, etc are not going anywhere and neither are the people who wish to enshrine white supremacy and adopt fascism.
It’s going to be a long four years.
VIEWINGS AND READINGS:
“I Had To Breakup with my Columbian and French Identities to Get Sober by Priscila Garcia-Jacquier [LINK]- “Getting sober meant I would erase in me the very things my grandmothers were hoping to pass down to their great-grandchildren; that tradition and celebration with food and drink. But if I wanted to stay sober, I had to deconstruct what my cultural performance was rooted in. It turns out that, for me, this was about so much more than food and drink.”
“Is The Shade Room Too Toxic To Function” by Micheal Blackmon [LINK]- “Culture critic Kimberly Foster, in a since-deleted tweet back in early February, summed up the issue many folks have with the site: “I want to support The Shaderoom because I respect the founder's hustle,” Foster wrote. “If it was just an aggregator of celebrity mess, it would be fine. But the platform monetizes misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, classism on purpose. They know exactly what they're doing.”
“How Saidiya Hartman Retelles the History of Black Life” by Alexis Okeowo [LINK]- “In 2017, Arthur Jafa directed a video for the Jay-Z single “4:44,” an apology for the rapper’s romantic failings. Two and a half minutes in, a woman walks down a New York street, wearing a pensive, purposeful expression: Hartman. “I was totally awkward and stiff,” she said, laughing as she recalled the filming. “She had a certain primness, properness,” Jafa acknowledged. “But it’s an image of a person thinking in motion.” When Jay-Z saw a cut of the video, he asked who Hartman was. Jafa explained that she is “the archangel of Black precarity.” Her presence, he said, “may not register to ninety-five per cent of his audience now, but five years down the line, ten years down the line, twenty years down the line, that’s going to be one of the most powerful moments of the video.”
“Giving Up On Cleopatra” by Kaitlyn Greenridge [LINK]- “I knew I should long for her but Cleopatra never appealed to me. Why should I find empowerment in the story of a woman forced to seduce her colonizers so that she would not be subjugated, who ended up losing in the end anyways? All because I was told she was beautiful? So it was a relief in high school when I learned that Cleopatra was probably not Black but Greek, mixed with other ethnicities. That she was maybe not even beautiful, but noticeably homely, and that her charm lay more in her ability to flirt than anything else made all the lore about her feel like even more of a bait and switch.”
LUTZE SIGHTING’S
Women Who Lead Conference: State of Social Justice in South Florida [LINK]
Racial Justice with Lutze Segu [LINK]
LISTENING
Coffee & Books: “ Sexual Citizens” [LINK]- this is great episode with two scholars who wrote about sexual assault on college campuses. I learned so much from the conversation and want to read the book.
Resistance [LINK]- this a new podcast about our current political moment. I love the podcasts that Gimlet creates, but I need to listen to more episodes before I hit the subscribe button.
Finding Our Way: Remembering with Alexis Pauline Gumbs [LINK]- APG is one of my favorite Black feminist thinkers, and she has a new book out on Black feminism and marine mammals. This was a delightful listen.
Do The Work: Silence is a Statement [LINK]- I do not think I am the target audience for this podcast, but some may find it useful. This episode is about an interracial friendship and how the racial reckonings this summer impacted two women. I have lots of critiques, but it ain’t my show. I plan on listening to more episodes.
Being Seen [LINK]- this is my absolute new favorite podcast it centers on Black gay, bi, and trans men experiences. It complicates our understanding of representation it is sonically beautiful and the conversations are life-affirming. It is the brainchild of the writer Darnell Moore. I have listened to every episode thus far; if you are wondering how much I love it.
ANNOUCEMENTS
Call for Submissions: “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty”
Guest Edited by Lutze Segu
decomp journal is now accepting submissions of Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Media/Art for its first themed zine, “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty.” Submissions should take up themes of Black and Indigenous futures while rejecting the false binaries and borders between these two formations.
Indigenous dispossession and chattel slavery are the two engineered atrocities that created the nation-states known as Canada and The United States (Turtle Island).
Black people who are the descendants of the enslaved in North America live in the afterlife of slavery, as Saidiya Hartman teaches us; Indigenous/Afro-Indigenous peoples are still fighting against ongoing settler colonialism.
Racial reckonings, bold social justice claims, abolition, repair, decolonization, ideas about defunding the police, failed reconciliation attempts, and protest fill the air. A global pandemic is a prescient time to reimagine what is possible. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty are inextricably tied. There is no futurity in white supremacy, no sustainable plan for the future. But a future that centers Indigeneity and Blackness is a future where survival on this planet can be made possible.
This is a call for writers and artists to help imagine, and thus bring about, these futures.
Submissions open September 1, 2020 – December 1, 2020.
Submit here: https://decompjournal.com/submit