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
photo by Matt Rourke
“What is your Anti-Racist Safety Plan?”
“Those of us who believe in human rights and equality have to imagine resistance beyond just words, symbolism, and attitudes. Resistance should also carry a realistic outlook that includes a self-defense strategy.”
- Zoe Samudzi and William C. Anderson
On Tuesday, September 28th, 2020, during the first presidential debate, the current occupant of the White House was asked by the moderator Chris Wallace to condemn white supremacy and, more specifically, the Proud Boys. Trump responded by saying, “stand back and stand by,” to which the Proud Boys, a white power organization, took that for what it was, which was a clear mandate.
Immediately the pundit class did what it does, and regular folks weighed in on social media. For the most part, those words were taken semi-seriously by both racist and anti-racist. It’s been a couple of weeks since those words and lots have happened.
The question I want to ask those of you who call yourself liberals, progressive, left, left of left, human rights advocates, etc., what is your anti-racist safety plan?
Do you have a plan for how you will protect your material body, imagination, and the bodies of the people whose humanity is not up for debate to you alive? And no, this is not me being hyperbolic. Scholars who study white power movements, anti-fascist activists, and organizers are concerned. Therefore, I, too, am concerned.
Our adversaries want a white ethnostate and wish to assert white power and dominance and use all available means to ensure that this happens. These are people who have decided to embrace racism as a means to get their needs met the same way you, dear reader, have decided to embrace anti-racism to get your needs met. Everyone is making informed decisions. There is maybe a small cadre of folks probably trapped in the cult of white supremacy, but that doesn’t minimize the reign of terror that they are ready to subject us all to at any minute. Our opponents are not wavering, and they have clear strategies. My question to you and it does not matter your race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc., what are you willing to do to protect your body, your comrades, the planet, and all the fauna and flora?
I am not interested in being an alarmist, but even if I were the current occupant of the White House has already rung that alarm.
The time to be alarmed is here; we might as well let that energy in and use it in an instructive way.
This moment in time keeps reminding me of the prophetic words of the poet Gil-Scot Heron who said, “the revolution will not be televised.” As USians many of us expect that Wolf Blitzer will dramatically come on the air one day with a breaking news update and announce to us all uniformly that the “revolution has started.” But that is not how all revolutions work. In some parts of the world, yes, someone sets themselves on fire, people occupy a town square, and direct confrontation happens. For too many of us, we are looking and waiting for some special symbolism or one last egregious act that we assume will be the thing that no one can deny then, and only then we will all be able to say that “x event was the night the revolution started.”
Well, boo, that is one way things can go down.
Currently, the reproductive organs of the undocumented in ICE custody are being removed without their consent, children are still being stolen and disappeared by the federal government, premature death is part of the daily fabric of Black life, over 200k USians have died from COVID-19, sociopolitical ideas like defund and abolish the police have permeated the mainstream consciousness of the nation, Roe v. Wade is on the brink of being destroyed if Amy Coney Barrett is appointed to SCOTUS, and you have wealthy billionaires like McKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos giving away her millions to organizations doing racial justice work.
Beloved, if this ain’t the revolution, this is most certainly the previews, and any minute now, the movie is going to start!
So below, I have compiled a list of things I think we should be considering. It’s not robust, and it is not meant to be. My goal here is that you will read this and take seriously that no one is safe in a post-genocide society where Black people are still living in the afterlife of chattel slavery. And because no one is safe under these conditions, what is your strategy to combat the real engineered violence that white supremacy wants to visit upon all of us who dare to stand its way.
What is your actual relationship to violence – The United States is a nation-state founded on genocide, rape, chattel slavery, and many wars. Although I am an abolitionist and I am against imperialism, I am not a pacifist. I will knuck if you buck! If white supremacists took over your neighborhood or apartment building tomorrow, what would you do? Which of your neighbors would you protect? Would you take up arms? Do you have a sense of how you would react in a situation so dire? Now is the time to know what your answer is.
What do you believe, and how deep is your belief system?- In the face of violence and severe conflict, white people must ask themselves would they be conscientious enough to betray white supremacy? For Black, Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, and other people of color, we need to ask ourselves, are we principled enough to not collude and betray our people for a room in the master’s house? So the real question is, are you a Peter or are you a Judas? Or are you a Mary Magdalene, the 13th disciple who never ever folded or doubted a minute?
Who are your people?- Who would you protect? If it came down to it, which bodies and people would you harbor and protect? In other words, do you have a disability justice framework? Remember always the words of Mia Mingus, who writes, “We cannot fight for liberation without a deep, clear understanding of disability, ableism and disability justice. The bodies of our communities are under siege by forces that leverage violence and ableism at every turn. Ableism is connected to all of our struggles because it undergirds notions of whose bodies are considered valuable, desirable and disposable. How do we build across our communities and movements so that we are able to fight for each other without leveraging ableism?” Does your revolution include disabled folks?
We know how to prepare for hurricanes, fires, flash floods, all other kinds of inclimate weather, and now even a global pandemic, but do we know how to prepare for white supremacist violence that is waiting on standby?
VIEWINGS AND READINGS
The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor- a great read for those wanting to understand how white supremacy dictates our relationship to our bodies and for those serious about disrupting that relationship.
After the Rain: Gentle Reminders for Healing, Courage, and Self-love by Alexandra Elle- I am sure you have seen the poetry, musings, and self-love affirmations of Alex Elle on Instagram she has a new book out and it is currently my bedtime reading.
Change: A World Without Prisons, Ruth Wilson Gilmore & Mariame Kaba in Conversation [LINK]– Mariame Kaba and RWG are the TRUTH. I have already listened to this talk twice and plan on listening to it again soon. If you ever wanted to hear two Black abolitionist thinkers be in conversation and see how the show Gilmore Girls play into it this is for you.
Would Dating Be Easier if I had a Vagina? [LINK]- Kat Blaque is a Black trans woman who made a video about how it is to date while trans and I really appreciated the this truth.
Ride Together, Die Together :White Supremacist Capitalist for Life by Mamademics [LINK]- “How can I teach about the dangers of white supremacy but ignore the fact capitalism is its best friend? And yet, how can I provide for my family without charging a reasonable price? These are the questions that flood my head when I’m trying to decide if I want to continue doing social justice work. I need to be able to do this work in a way that is both ethical and allows me to have the things I need and some of what I want.”
National Book Foundation Announces the Final Literature for Justice Titles [LINK]- “The National Book Foundation announced selections in the third and final year of the Literature for Justice program (LFJ). This year the list includes seven titles that shed light on mass incarceration in the United States. Also announced today are the five committee members tasked with selecting the titles and elevating their visibility. This committee works alongside the Foundation as part of Literature for Justice, a three-year campaign that seeks to contextualize the issue of mass incarceration through literature, creating an accessible and thought-provoking collection of books crafted for broad public consumption.”
Ellen DeGeneres and the Many Chances We Give Famous White Women [LINK]- “When white women make mistakes, they can lean on self-deprecating jokes; they can lean on the goodwill of audiences; they can lean on their own humanity and the fact that they’re always learning. And it works because we have been socialized to see their humanity.”
Kim Parker, The “Sassy Fat Black Friend” Trope, and The Pervasiveness of Fatphobia in Media [LINK]- “Let’s just address it now: Kim is a fat character. She is a small fat, but she is still fat. The writers of the show make this clear in the very first episode by having one of Moesha’s classmates call Kim “fat,” in a derogatory sense, and make jokes about her weight. Moesha and Niecy sit back and laugh instead of defending her—an experience all-too-familiar for so many fat people. Kim is written as a fat character, and because of that, we have engaged her as such since the 90s. Her fatness is constantly made part of the joke. In fact, it feels like the character itself was created out of an anti-Black exaggeration of how fat Black women are perceived. And in doing this they make the thinner and/or lighter character look “better” by comparison. Kim was never meant to be the character audiences wanted to be but rather an example of the “ghetto” fat Black girls that society looks down on. Showing fatness as a moral failure, fat characters are made out to be cautionary tales of “unrespectable” Black girls. Using fat characters to prop up thin ones as morally better people.”
Book Review: White Fragility by Rebecca Green [LINK]- “Diangelo tells her readers to internalize a list of assumptions she created when being called out on racism – including “Whites are/ I am unconsciously invested in racism… nothing exempts me from the forces of racism” (p. 142-3). She says that if white people adopted these assumptions, our institutions would change and become less racist (p. 144). The implication that white people simply changing their assumptions would change the system of mass incarceration or racist housing discrimination is baffling.”
Kenyon Review Mourning Sex by Starr Davis [LINK]- “When a Black man dies, I go looking for him inside the body of another Black man. And if he’s not in there, I go searching in someone else If he’s my own blood, I go looking for more blood If he’s of no relation at all, then I go looking for relations.”
Testosterone with Dr. Katina Karkazis Instagram video [LINK]- This is a great conversation that helps us divest from the gender binary and attempt to break with our addiction to putting a gender on hormones.
On Jessica Krug’s Blackphising & the Mirror We Run From [LINK]- “Some Latines love to say “light skin” when speaking about White Latines who obviously have White skin. As a light-skinned Black woman, it is completely troubling when folks who are 5-8 shades lighter than me think we both belong to the same pigmented category. This is also a co-opting of Black vernacular that has been used to reference shades of Black skin.”
LISTENING
Cite Black Women Podcast: S2E9: Race, Technology, and Abolition [LINK] -The scholar Ruha Benjamin’s work studies the intersection of data and racism.
Is It Time To Say R.I.P. To ‘P.O.C’? [LINK]- This is a necessary conversation that we all should be thinking about critically.
We Insist: 2020s Protest Music [LINK]- for those looking for protest music NPR has put together an eclectic playlist for you.
Unlocking Us Brene Brown with Sonya Renee Taylor [LINK]- a talk on body shame, radical self-love, and social justice that connects how we think about our bodies and oppression.
Anzalduing It S4 EP 16: On White Latinx Fragility [LINK]- Finally a group of white Latinx folks talked about own brand of fragility a phenomenon I have been talking about privately for a minute.
ANNOUCEMENTS
I am giving a keynote at FIU on 10/23 and it will be masterclass on how to lead from anti-racist feminist space and I will talk about the death of “the girl boss.” Get tickets [here].
Halloween night I will be part of a panel for South Florida People of Color who will be screening Get Out and discussing the horrors of racism. Event information coming soon.
I have another surprise for Halloween, if you want to be one of the first to know, subscribe to my newsletter below!