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

“A Year Later, Who is Still Reckoning?”

For the past couple of weeks, I have been looking at the white people in my personal and professional life with much more skepticism. The reason for this is because political scientists Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson were able to use data to illustrate that the racial reckoning that we spent the last year talking about and dissecting did not happen. Put differently; white people did not reckon at the scale or on the level the media reported. Chudy and Jefferson showed that support of Black Lives Matter among white people is lower now than before the pandemic. Their data shows that less than 20% of white people genuinely care about Black suffering.

In other words, when we are talking about building an anti-racist coalition, we are talking about a coalition that will include very few white people because only less than 20% of white people care about Black people and are committed to racial justice.

Yes, lots of white people opined last year on social media, went out and protested, purchased lots of books, got in shallow fights with their friends and families. Still, none of this has resulted in fundamental changes in their behavior, politic, and ethics. Many white people have retreated further into the comforts and lies of whiteness.

Somatically my body already knew this to be true. I knew that all the well-meaning white people had already packed up and gone back home. This time last year, our country was on fire, and people were mad as hell asking hard questions and finally waking up to the fact that white supremacy is structural and systemic. This summer, many people are vaccinated and back at brunch.

Denialism, which is a habit and characteristic of white supremacy, is a behavior that all United State-ians have been well-trained to practice.

We deny all manner of things as a way to cope with the incomprehensible. For example, we are collectively galloping towards species suicide through our aggressive denial and inability to address climate disaster(s). There are many ways we as humans practice denialism. However, the ultimate denial is watching white people who think white supremacy will not harm them or, worse, stay committed to this lie. Liberal white folks do not yet feel the terror in their bones, and so they go back to sleep, flirt with Nazis, and believe the lie of white supremacy that tells them they are inherently superior. And they do this all while nursing a perpetual pang in their spirit. A pang that is exploited by mainstream wellness culture trying to sell white people's spirituality and fake comfort is divorced from the realities of oppression, power, and privilege.

Many white liberals are in a relentless pursuit to live more meaningful, happy lives. However, these same people refuse to understand that a purpose-driven and meaningful life that includes radical love, acceptance, joy, peace, deep connection, and fulfillment can only be ascertained through confronting white supremacy.

Neoliberalism and big tech exist to exploit our desires and render us numb, distracted, and never satisfied. The antidote to this assault on our humanity is to reclaim our humanity back from the clutches of capitalism, algorithms, and white supremacy. We do this by becoming more present in our daily lives and getting intimate with our inner colonizer(s).

To those of us, irrespective of our race and ethnicity, who are still committed to anti-racism and bringing forth a new world, please do your best to decenter whiteness and the white people who have proven to be fair-weathered comrades. Let’s keep our eyes fixed on freedom and remember the words of Mariame Kaba, “hope is a discipline.”

Finally, I leave you with a few words from James Baldwin on love & danger. Click the picture below to be sent to the four minute Youtube video.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS:

‘The Psychopathic Problem of The White Mind’ by Katie Herzog - "This interview essay includes the leaked lecture that Dr. Aruna Khilanani gave at Yale University that has got white liberals SHOOKETH. I am currently positively obsessed with her ideas and I am not a fan of psychoanalysis. I do not think her lecture is as inflammatory as the media is making it seem and she is hitting on things that I get glimmers of in my one-on-one anti-racist coaching sessions. I am adding a link to an interview that Dr. Khilanani gives to Dr. Marc Lamont. It gives more context to why she gave this talk and who her intended audience was for a talk that is titled “The Psychopathic Problem of the white mind.” Unlearning is hard AF. It requires going into parts of the mind and soul that are downright scary, but the only way to get intimate with your inner colonizer is to follow it, hunt it, talk to it, and wrestle with it. Your anti-racist practice should include you relentlessly pursuing and disarming your inner colonizer. “What is the difference between white peoples' suffering and the suffering of people of color? People of color, myself included, suffer from being positioned in the world, psychologically, and the stuff that goes with it: violence, this, that. Now, white people suffer from problems of their own mind. They suffer with trust, they suffer with intimacy, they suffer with closeness, shame, guilt, anxiety. They suffer with their minds. Don’t get me wrong, people of color are also neurotic and have their own stuff and ups and downs. But there is a fundamental issue I think that is very unique to white suffering and I think that’s their own mind.”

Why Bo Burnham, Jenna Marbles, And Shane Logged Off by Scaachi Koul - “Netflix has categorized Bo Burnham’s latest special, Inside, as a ‘comedy,’ which is outrageous because it’s clearly the horror movie of the year. I don’t know whether anything has scared me as much recently as watching all 90 minutes; it felt like peering into my own rotting core, my hand wrapped around a phone with every single social media app open. Inside has been praised as a rare decent piece of pandemic-inspired entertainment, but it’s also a nightmare about the internet, a tool we can’t escape and all seem to hate.”

Pronouns 102: how to stop messing up people’s pronouns by Dr. Kirby Conrod - “Pronouns are hard! There is a reason for that (the reason is… linguistics), but the fact of the matter is, many people find it very difficult to switch pronouns for a person, or to use certain pronouns at all. This post isn’t about getting into the why, but more going about the how to get better.”

The History of the Work Spouse by Katie Heaney - “That we’ve adopted this language for co-workers reflects an over-identification with our workplaces, the result of a culture that recast workaholism as ambition and asked us to lean in and work smarter and stay hungry. Perhaps ‘friend’ felt insufficient for those people we relied on to make such impossible conditions survivable.”

Of Course Cis People Are Being Weird About Elliot Page’s Body by s.e. Smith - “Cis people, especially those in progressive circles, are often keen to prove they’re not transphobic: They’re one of the good ones, they’re down with trans people, and they’re hip to the scene. That nervous behavior is often motivated by a desire to be affirming and supportive. But it can inadvertently reinforce transphobia by making invasive, over the top, and objectifying comments that attempt to illustrate how comfortable the speaker is with the existence of trans and other non-normative bodies.”

The Battle Sigh of the Old Mom by Karen Russo - ‘Being an older mom makes you tired. So fucking tired. You could have no nanny or ten nannies and you’d still be tired,’ my friend Shauna says. This is coming from a woman who has no regrets about having children later in life. A Hollywood film producer for 20 years, she didn’t have time for kids. Now, she does. And she’s exhausted.”

Giving and Getting Some: Reflecting on The Penetration Of My Manhood and Ass by Craig Washington - “In his 1986 masterpiece In The Life, a formative anthology of Black gay men’s writings that inspired successive generations, writer Joseph Beam proclaimed ‘Black men loving Black men’ as ‘the revolutionary act.’ Could bottoming be considered a revolutionary act for self-affirming Black men?”

Know Your Place at the Cookout by Dr. Regina N.Bradley - “Whether you're calling it aBBQ, get-together, or just ‘firing up the grill,’ a cookout is a staple in the South. As a Black girl growing up in the gummy heat of Southwest Georgia,cookoutshappened on a whim and on different levels: a little something with immediate family and a neighbor, "on the yard" in college when fraternity boys needed to sell tickets to a party, the Vacation Bible School church cookout, and the top-tier cookout a.k.a. the family reunion.”

LUTZE SIGHTINGS:

Four Black Social Activists Share What Juneteenth Means To Them by Joce Blake - Catch me and three other Black Feminists discuss Juneteenth, what it means to us, and more.

Lutze's 73 Questions - I did my own version of Vogue's 73 Questions; check it out!

LISTENING:

I have “discovered '' aka subscribed to two new podcasts that I want to share with you. I listen to lots of podcasts, but I am very funny about hitting subscribe. The first one is Gender Reveal by Tuck Woodstock. This podcast is all about gender and it radically decenters cis people while doing so. As someone who is deeply obsessed with thinking about gender and how it gets made in the public sphere listening to non-binary folks talk about gender has been liberating and thrilling. As a person who uses a critical race lens to understand and organize the world, this podcast does require me to filter the conversations and do extra work because the race analysis is lacking for me, but overall I am here for what this podcast is contributing to our understanding and discourse on gender.

The second podcast is Throughline by NPR. Confession: I am low-key a NPR heaux. I am not NPR’s target audience, but I really like NPR. I was doing my best to avoid subscribing to Throughline, but they got me with their miniseries on capitalism, which is a must listen to in this political moment. When NPR is doing a miniseries on capitalism it is safe to say that capitalism is in trouble. The episode that really made me hit subscribe was the one titled, “Who is NPR (For)? They interviewed Michel Martin, and it was beautiful to hear a Black woman be in conversation with her brown colleagues about the shift that is happening at NPR. I clearly cannot deny that I am slowly ensconcing myself within the NPR universe.

Being Seen - Season 2 Episode 12 “Afro-Latinx”- This is a beautiful episode about Black queer men living at the intersection of being Latinx.

NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour - Keeping Up With The Kardashians - This was a very smart episode about the cultural ramifications and impacts that the Kardashians have had on pop-culture. I listened to three podcast about the ending of the show and this was by far the most insightful and nuanced insight that I came across. Confession: back in the day your girl (me) was a fan of KUWTK and a fan of Kim, but then Black feminism saved me. There is hope for us all ;)

Coffee and Books: Marc Talks With Incarcerted Writer and Journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal - If you know of the political prisoner Mumia you are going to enjoy this episode. Also, it is the first podcast episode that I have ever listened to where the guest was behind bars. It was interesting to hear the prison recording become the background noise of the podcast episode.

Untold Stories: Beyond the Binary - This is a four-part podcast episode series ALL about non-binary folks from Entertainment Weekly. It is very well done and necessary listening for those of us who are wanting to go beyond the binary.

The Laverne Cox Show - I am usually NOT a fan of celebrity podcasts, but I am here for Laverne’s show because she is a smart Black woman who has the range. The three outstanding episodes I recommend are as follows: Beauty as Capital with Kimberly Foster, Moving Beyond The Gender Binary with Alok, and Fat phobia and Diet Culture with Virgie Tovar.

With Friends Like These: Doing what’s in your pleasure- If you have been missing and worried about Andrew Gillum as I have this episode is for you. It is very apparent that Gillum has been working his program and getting to the business of healing.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Our comrades at Black Feminist Future will be hosting a free virtual experience celebrating the legacy, power, and possibilities of Black feminisms on August 28th. We deeply believe that Black liberation is achievable; and to get there we must center Black feminisms, build power, and organize to defend and protect Black women, girls, and gender non-conforming folks. Jubilee will be a space to be reintroduced, reenergized, and renewed in Black Feminisms.

#Jubilee21

#BlackFeministHomecoming

Newsletter #20