As I have begun to dedicate a certain fraction of my time and energy towards battling the status quo of oppression and plunder that has been imposed by thewhite male power elite in this country, I have come across a two major road blocks within black movements that have been, in my mind, seriously hindering our progress. The first is the failure to address privilege within black communities. That will be something I will address in my next post. However, today I have to talk about the problem that I fear will be the dagger in the heart of our movement: The centering of whiteness by sometimes well-intentioned black people. I see, almost everyday, three different ways that black people put white people and whiteness at the epicenter of what is legitimate, relevant, and powerful. We must understand that this is by the book the manifestation of white supremacy. To center whiteness instead of empowering blackness is to entrench the grips of white supremacy. The first way in which I see this happening comes in the form of respectability politics. Put simply, respectability politics is when marginalized groups (in this case black people), police members of their own group so as to show their social values compatible with the mainstream rather than challenging for failure to accept anything different. Black people do this ALL the time. We tell black boys not to sag their pants, tell black women not to twerk, criminalize the vernacular English that developed in black communities, ESPECIALLY criminalize the public use of the word "nigga", we condemn rap music as "not real music" or assert that "nobody makes real music anymore", and so on and so forth. What we are really doing is joining white mainstream culture in attacking everything about ourselves that is not white (and patriarchal and heterosexual). By doing that not only do we fail to challenge the mainstream for its criminalization of blackness, but we legitimize whiteness as what is right. When we do that we tell the rest of the society that whiteness is the ruler by which we measure what is good and bad. Instead we need to be challenging the idea that whiteness is the center of correctness every chance we get. The second thing I see black people doing is insisting on the use of and respect for institutions that were established to fuel white supremacy to solve our problems. Again this asserts that these institutions, established by the white heterosexual male power elite, are legitimate. This to me is insane, seeing as these institutions were established by the plunder and sometimes violent exploitation of black people! If anything we should be challenging the true legitimacy of these institutions. For example, how many black "leaders" do you hear chastising black people for failing to show up to voting polls? In reality what they are asking us to do is to bolster the political institution which has committed and continues to commit some of the worst crimes our communities have seen! One of the things that kills me is when leaders ask for "respect for the due process". This process has been robbing us of justice for hundreds of years! This is the system that established separate but equal, protected Jim Crow, and continues to perpetrate the mass theft of black life that is mass incarceration . And "leaders" ask us to be patient and have respect for it?! I experienced this just last week on the University of Iowa campus. After holding a rally to demonstrate how black voices aren't heard on campus Georgina Dodge, the chief diversity officer (and black woman) told the media that if students have concerns have problems with the way the administration handles issues of blackness that we should go to the black student advisory council. This council is a part of the administration!! The same administration that we were just protesting!! We have to challenge white institutions of power, and attempt to set up our own if we are to create progress, not insist on the use of the ones that have been the tools of oppression. Finally, we need to stop insisting on inclusivity in our movements and on educating white people. Don't be afraid to assert a space as black! When discussing/protesting problems that are unique to the black experience, do not feel obligated to include white people! For as many spaces that we have been/are excluded from, we NEED to possess our own spaces to discuss and organize. Pressure to be inclusive comes from the fear of black people coming together to do anything. Furthermore, it is not our job to educate white people. Ignorance is not a problem WE suffer from. In fact, focusing on educating white people removes black empowerment from the focus. Instead we center the issue on "fixing" white people rather than healing black people. I'd be open to discussing this in my thread. However I'd like to end: How can we truly begin to heal if we are using remedies created by the one who inflicted the wounds in the first place? -515
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October 2018
Matt BruceViva DSM!! |