“The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” - Malcolm X
Not yet halfway through the academic year, Duke University has — yet again — reminded us of the violence foundational to this institution. On October 18, a group of male students shouted racist hate speech and slurs outside the dorm room of an Asian-American woman. On October 23, a poster advertising #BlackLivesMatter event featuring Patrisse Cullors was vandalized with an anti-black racial slur. On November 5, a homophobic death threat was written on a wall in a dorm targeting a first year student. In response, Larry Moneta, the Vice President of Student Affairs, had the audacity to refer to this violence as nothing more than a series of acts of “copycat hatred.” Hate crimes are consistently labeled as mere “incidents” by the administration and little to no action is taken. These acts of terror are emblematic of the larger landscape and culture of Duke University that actively reproduce practices and expressions of violence against its marginalized students — the everyday realities many of us know too well.
When this erasure and oppression comes to a rupture, manifested in an act of phenomenal violence, the university pretends that it is an unexpected aberration, as if the university itself has not created, maintained, and continued to actively build the space that allows these antagonisms to exist. Each time a rupture of violence occurs, the people who are targeted are expected to come up with solutions to their oppression, a process that demands extraordinary emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual uncompensated labor. We denounce the exploitation of students, faculty, and staff who are called upon to perpetually reiterate and seek public validation of their experiences in the name of “discussion” — as if their pain has ever been taken into consideration by the administration. Duke has made it clear that it has no regard for the lives of marginalized peoples.
The administration’s passive, delayed reactions to these hate crimes epitomize its continuous silencing and dismissal of students’ concerns about their safety and welfare. If closed-door boardroom meetings, campus conversations, forums, and the like were effective, as the administrators wants us to believe, students would not be forced to confront racial slurs, vandalized posters, or homophobic death threats on campus — all of which happened this semester. Duke fully knows the actions it needs to take, because we, those who came before us, and those who came before them, have told them what to do, time and time again. But the university continues to ignore these demands and attempts to placate and distract us with “community conversations” and empty promises.
We are not interested in another “conversation.” We know that Duke has ignored all conventional avenues of action for change. We recognize that the creation of various institutional entities (whether task forces or diversity committees) with the sole purpose of “making recommendations” is a pacifying tactic that the administration has utilized, over and over again, to shelve the actual demands made by students over decades of student organizing. We do not have faith in the institution that has been unrelenting in its refusal to honor and fulfill our demands, while masquerading under the guise of “dialogue” that was never meant to include us.
We see through you. Administrators exploit ideals of “diversity,” “inclusivity,” and “collective responsibility” to absolve themselves of the violence that they both produce and maintain. By doing so, they try to sell us an illusion thatallof us are conversing on equal terms, when truth is that they maintain a monopoly on access and resources necessary to enact transformative institutional changes. We understand that at the end of the day, Duke’s priority will always be its control of power and reputation over the well-being of non-normative members of our communities.
We carry, within us, the institutional knowledge and memory that you seek to obliterate. We know that you would love nothing more than for student coalitions to fall prey to intimidation, exhaustion, or compliance. When that fails, you wait for us to graduate and disappear. You can no longer pretend that you hold the interests of the marginalized at heart while continuing to foster an environment that only functions on the concept of temporary appeasement. These are the tactics that you have used to erase our labor, to suppress our dissent, but this time, we know better.
We know our history of resistance and your history of oppression. We remember that Duke was built on the stolen land of indigenous peoples acquired through genocide and settler colonial violence. We remember that the resources that built this institution were plundered from the backs of black and brown labor. Duke University was built with money generated by slave labor. This place was never meant to be for us, nor to serve us.
We dwell in a long tradition of resistance; we are descendants of those who refuse to be silenced. We celebrate all those who struggled and all those those who dreamed of being free. We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, and we commit to honoring and continuing their work, for the sake of those who will come after us.
We are direct descendants of the People of Color Caucus, and we refuse to let their hard labor and truth-telling voices disappear into a quiet silence. We recognize not only the People of Color Caucus, but the countless students that led the struggle before them. We honor, lift up the forgotten names, and invoke the strength of all those who came before us: the first five Black students who in 1963 courageously stepped on this campus, still rotting with its white supremacist anti-Blackness; those who occupied the Chapel Quad en masse in 1968; Black students who fearlessly took over the Allen Building in 1969; those who protested U.S. imperialism and the cruelties of the Vietnam War in the 70’s, those who demanded the university divest from apartheid South Africa in the 80’s; those who led the demands for the hiring of Black faculty in 1988, and many countless others. Full of indignation, unwavering in our commitment to get free together, we rise up as Duke Enrage.
As we build upon the history of student movements, we recognize that we are at a momentous threshold. At this time when protests are occurring all over college campuses in the country and abroad, we embrace our collective power and our duty to fight. University leaders and administrators have lost their jobs, and we know that you fear for yours. You expect us to yield and to accept a semblance of your “efforts” as a resolution to our outrage. We will not back down. Remember, we hold the power in this movement and we are here to use it. Expect us.
in addition to this great thread, i recommend reading “how the irish became white” by noel ignatiev. i do expect a lot of fighting against these facts because these lies and myth are so ingrained and now have become a part of the community and the sense of self and pride of irish people.
Anti-Blackness is such a thing amongst the Irish till this day Black people find it so difficult to get work here in Ireland and if they do get work they often get harassed for being Black. I had a feeling that the ‘Irish slave’ wasn’t a thing, I’m glad to know in fact it wasn’t.
This is why history is so important. People try to bury this because of shame and some still feel no guilt. The Irish are not the only ones who have done this. Everyone who landed on this rock was the new negro on the block and tried hard to exclude themselves. No matter how many times you check white on an application you will never be white. You are just a means to an end.
the funniest thing about the Irish slave myth is that it was started by non irish (norwegian) white supremacists as a trap for Irish people who really didnt know their own history but claimed whiteness. and it worked.
I really don’t understand how some people hate Hamilton. Here’s some reasons why I love it:
• it was written by a man of color, Lin Manuel Miranda, to modernize and retell the story of the founding of the US and the overall impact an immigrant faced in an up and coming nation
• the roles were specifically written for people of color to play the characters because of the white washing in the media, but specifically Broadway (there was an entire scandal surrounding this casting choice in 2016)
• it emphasized the roles that immigrants played in the founding of the country but also in the modern day America
• not to mention that Lin Manuel Miranda speaks out about a variety of issues in America and he even went as far as to open Hamilton in Puerto Rico to raise money to rebuild their country after the hurricanes
• The musical gives a voice to people of color and gives them a place in a retelling of history that they were largely not included in, especially in our text books and classrooms
• it empowers women throughout the musical, showing different dynamics and types of powerful women (Angelica compared to Eliza)
• it expresses the duality of each character and while Aaron Burr is the anti-hero, he isn’t a villain. It shows motivation and angle behind each character’s action
• it shows us people of color in powerful positions! It gives THREE presidents of color and the only white person in the musical was King George III
• Hamilton is a relateable character. Specifically his line from Hurricane, “When my prayers to God we’re met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance!” That’s so powerful!!!
• Lin chose the hip hop/R&B style music because he thought it was the sound of America and it represented the country.
These are just a handful from the top of my head. I like Hamilton because I find Alexander Hamilton to be an inspiring, relatable, flawed, and outspoken character. His ability to take a stand and constantly voice his opinions are what I aspire to do as well. He was outspoken and bold in the middle of a revolution, and he went after what he wanted. Despite his flaws and mistakes, he is still one of my favorite fictional (the musical portrayal is fictional imho) characters that still inspires me to this day. I could write an entire essay about the musical, but I’ll spare you.
During these difficult times, I hope you can be like Hamilton: strong in the face of adversity and unafraid to punch the assholes that get in your way. Support those around you and stand with our Black friends. Black Lives Matter!
Blah blah blah and here’s why we hate it:
* It glorifies the founding fathers, European colonizers, and slave owners.
* It’s written by a non-Black man with no connection to slavery and who has no right to make commentary on it in any way.
* It’s true that it might cast non-white people in the main cast…as slave owners and colonizers.
* “Sally, be a lamb darling, won’t you open it?” *vomiting intensifies*
* Miss me with the idea that Hamilton is fucking feminist lmao. There are four women, I repeat, FOUR WOMEN, in the play, only 14 of the 46 songs are sung by women. All of them play a peripheral love interest role to Hamilton, even Angelica, who in real life was already happily married by the time she met Hamilton, and in the musical is supposed to be his intellectual equal, and yet all she gets to do is sing and rap about…her feelings for him and the love triangle between them and her sister. The only exception to this role is Peggy, who…umm, disappears. It doesn’t pass the bare minimum of the Bechdel test. The women of the play are not powerful feminists, they are pawns designed to further Alexander’s journey and exist in relation to him. Them snapping their fingers and saying they’ll include women in the sequel is just a “you go girl!” moment, it’s all for show. We as a society are just so used to the “bare minimum of women is enough or even majority women, just make them give sassy quips and act ‘BADASS’ and boom, you’ve got a feminist narrative!” that we accept stories like these even outside of the colonist propaganda aspect of it all as feminist. Despite there being actual feminist musicals that put women at their center out there that are much, MUCH better and less problematic than Hamilton. Mean Girls? Heathers? SIX? The Color Purple? Hello? But no just focus on the musical with like four women whose only feminist moment is asking to be a part of the narrative.
* Say No to This
* It doesn’t give POC a voice so much as it has them play the role of historically white founding fathers and colonizers who were involved with the slave trade.
* Alexander is not a relatable hero. He’s a racist colonist who married into a family of slaveowners.
Is that enough for you?
Although:
During these difficult times, I hope you can be like Hamilton: strong in the face of adversity and unafraid to punch the assholes that get in your way. Support those around you and stand with our Black friends. Black Lives Matter!
Good God. Some people are unable to be reasoned with.
Hey! So I made this post years ago, and I totally forgot about it and this blog for a while, but I definitely agree with what this person is saying and I think it’s important to read!
I am sorry. I was wrong. My original post is tone deaf, flawed, and wrong on several accounts. Thank you to @thisismisogynoir for their contribution and corrections.
I thought about deleting this post when it came back up, but this person shares a lot of important information that we should know as we consume or engage with this media.
I hope you take the time out of your day to read this, listen to Black voices on this matter, and do your research.
I will do better in the future. Thank you for correcting me and holding me accountable.
“The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” - Malcolm X
“Black death and trauma remains central to the campaign of the Democratic Party. At the July 2016 Democratic National Convention, black mothers whose children had been killed by either police or white vigilantes, in the “Mothers of the Movement,” encouraged the public to vote for Clinton and thereby promoted her path for restoration and change. The assemblage of women who attested to Clinton’s “compassion and understanding to support grieving mothers” offers a profound illustration of the use of black female grief and trauma as a political strategy in solidifying Clinton’s connection to Black communities in general, and to Black women voters in particular.” - Jallicia Jolly
non-Black people: when you post anti-Blackness, please use trigger warnings and tags. Black people should not have to go through the emotional trauma of seeing anti-Blackness without their consent.
some geek: um not all cops r bad ? my dad’s a cop he doesnt kill black people
me internally: all cops are shitty because all cops are accomplices to the systemic repression carried out by the state and they’re agents of violence on both the structural and the individual level….by doing their job aka being a ‘good cop’ theyre carrying out a level of brutal violence and violation that police oversight committees and journalists refuse to see. U can’t demilitarize an institution that protects capitalism, breaks strikes, and upholds white supremacy. U cant sensitivity train away the fundamentally racist, antiblack, and xenophobic purpose of an institution that was created to segregate and criminalize and brutalize people because its very notions of criminality and aggressiveness belong to white supremacy.
everything about what the police are supposed to do is the problem and all cops participate in this. cops exist to maintain the law and order of the capitalist class, to maintain the white supremacist capitalist cisheteropatriarchy, to criminalize and brutalize the poor, the queer, and people of color. all others whose existence challenges the system will be subdued. there are no good cops
what i say: FUCK YA DAD TOO BITCH! I SAID WHAT I SAID!
Okay, non-Black people turning Will Smith punching Chris Rock at the Oscars into a meme is not sitting right with me bc y’all are the first ones to perpetuate misogynoir. Y’all laughing are the same people demonizing Black hair, especially Black women’s hair. I think non-Black people are not understanding why what Chris Rock said was misogynoir and humiliating for Jada & Black women
Like, yes Will Smith chose violence. But let’s not miss the point of all that was Chris Rock is a shitty misogynist comedian who made his career humiliating Black women and he made a cruel joke about a Black woman’s alopecia and it was unacceptable. We’re not laughing because “oh look Black men are violent” Black women are laughing because we saw some goddamn justice for once
First #yellowout now #asianinvasion. Really? Can we as a community not be respectful of the Black community, and be supportive? Can we not be happy for our fellow people of colour for launching a successful and fun Tumblr event to celebrate themselves, without feeling the need to co-opt it and steal from it? What does it really take away from us to allow black people to have complete ownership over something they created?
You want to have a Tumblr wide event that celebrates Asians. Fine. Be creative, Look at the issues we specifically face, and find a way to combat them. Don’t take another group’s idea just because it was successful. Especially since Asians have a history (and present) of anti-blackness.
You know what would actually be a really cool thing? #asiansasartists . Because Asian artists are ignored and invisiblized. We are huge contributors to pop, music, fine art, literature, make up, clothing design, etc… world and yet there is very little recognition of it. We are creative and inspired, and yet our parents often discourage us from pursuing careers in the arts. We are stereotyped as too robotic, traditional, or perfectionist to truly be creators of groundbreaking art. So it would be really cool to have a day of posting and reblogging books, clothes, paintings, food, animations, music, or whatever else by Asian artists so we can see just how artistic our community is, celebrate that, and maybe find new authors to read, music to listen, and make up gurus to follow.
If you all really want to do something, then be creative. Otherwise not only are you all being racist, you’re being boring about it.
First thing’s first. Remind yourself that Asia is huge, and there are a ton of people living there. Asians are currently a full 63% of the world’s population. Seriously think about that. There are more Asians than every other group of humans in the world combined, and our continent is so large half of us don’t live in the same day as the other half. Asia, the continent, extends from Palestine to the Philippines, from Russia to Sri Lanka. We speak over 2000 languages, and there are honestly too many ethnic and identity groups to count. And due to the colonial legacy, modern day imperialism and neo-liberalism, general migration, and a host of other reasons the Asian diaspora has spread to basically every country in the world.
There are a lot of us. And we are everywhere. So it is only fitting that our politics, experiences, and identities reflect that diversity, but unfortunately on tumblr, and pretty much everywhere else, we are collapsed, condensed, and repackaged in easily identifiable and digestible packages. So let’s unpack that package, and really examine what we are talking about when we say “Asian.”
I am going to use myself as an example, because my experiences are the ones most familiar to me. And because specificity is very important in this case.
In terms of racial and ethnic identity, I identify as Asian, Asian-American, Southeast Asian, Burmese, Chinese-Burman, and a Burmese Buddhist. Though it may seem excessive and redundant, I assure you none of these categories overlap entirely, and each has a different set of politics that goes with it.
Let me explain. I identify as Asian because I am of Asian descent, and I live outside of the continent of Asia. I repeat, because I live outside of the continent of Asia. People living in Asia don’t have any reason to call themselves Asian. They generally feel no need or desire to classify themselves based on a category white people randomly assigned them. I had never heard the term Asian before I immigrated to the US. Paradoxically, I didn’t become Asian until I left Asia. Asian people have been conquering and trading with one another in very sophisticated and often devastating ways since before (non-Jewish) Europeans figured out how to bathe themselves. Being Asian, and identifying as Asian are not the same thing.
I’m also Asian-American, because I am Asian and I live in the U-must-be-white-to-live-without-a-hyphenSA. I live in a constant state of “where are you from/your English is so good/how do you say your name again?” I am Asian-American, because I don’t have a choice, but also because I chose to stand in solidarity with other people whom I share these unique experiences with.
I identify additionally as Southeast Asian, because White people and East Asian-Americans like to pretend that people like me do not exist. Like brown skin, wavy hair, fabulous eyebrows, and Asian are mutually exclusive. We are always the other Asians, the not really Asians, the what part of China is (insert your country) in Asians.
I identify as Burmese, because I am an immigrant, my parents are immigrants, and Asian-Americans don’t really get along with one other that well. Remember how I said that Asians have been warring with each other since forever? Yeah, that history doesn’t disappear because they are in a different continent. Our people have done some really messed up stuff to each other in the ancestor lands, and then we came here and continued to do messed up stuff to each other. Like did you know that the majority of the property of Little Tokyo in LA is owned by Chinese-Americans, because they bought it all up when the US government drove Japanese-Americans into concentration camps during WWII? There was, and is still little, solidarity between the various Asian-American groups. It makes sense on one hand. Our struggles are so different. Cambodian-Americans deal with a lot of issues around undocumented status, alcohol abuse is a serious issue with Korean-Americans, and Palestinian-Americans are facing the ongoing genocide of their people while being labeled terrorists for protesting it. We live our lives very differently, and sometimes it feels like the only way to survive is to stick with our own. The people who know us, who look like us, who speak out language, who eat familiar food, who share a familiar image of home.
I am also Chinese-Burman and a Burmese Buddhist, because surprise race and ethnicity are far more complicated than people in the US seem to think it is. So I mention these two together because in Burma race, ethnicity, and religion are very closely tied together. In Burma, it is assumed that Burman=Buddhist, and “Kala” (a general term that used to refer to South Asians, but also sometimes dark skinned Asians in general, but also sometimes Burman and people of other Burmese ethnicities who are Muslims)=Muslim. It is a weird way in which colorism, racism, and Buddhist supremacy intersect. So racially I am Chinese, meaning that my great-grandparents were all immigrants from China, and all their children and grandchildren only married and had children with other Chinese descended people. I have a Chinese name (that I don’t actually use), I celebrate (some) Chinese traditions, and I grew up thinking I am Chinese. But my identity card says I am Burman. I am also darker than pretty much everyone in my family; I have thick eyebrows, and wavy hair. I don’t “look Chinese,” and I don’t automatically get the privileges that come with that in Burma. But I am Buddhist (or at the very least not visually identifiable as a Muslim), and lighter than the average Burman, so I get the privileges attached to that. It’s complicated.
So just to recap, I just wrote like two pages on my own personal racial identity, and I was being really brief. Being Asian is a really complicated thing in a way that doesn’t necessarily have parallels with other POC. This becomes very obvious whenever Asian or Asian-American issues come up on tumblr or in US based social justice circles. Like Asian privilege is not a real thing in the US, but Japanese privilege is totally a thing in Japan. Asian-American anti-blackness is not the same thing as anti-blackness in Asia. They are real but separate issues, that need separate solutions and conversations. The opinions of Asians in Asia are not relevant to issues of cultural appropriation in the US. Likewise Asians in the US don’t get a free pass to talk about Asia as a whole. Nepalese-Americans have no right to comment on what is happening in Malaysia, only Malaysians-Americans can do that.
TLDR: Asian identities are really complicated, and that translates to social justice issues in a very complicated way. We need to listen to each other, and work in solidarity with each other. And most of all, we need non-Asian POC to let us hash out these conversations without derailing and interjecting into them.
On Sept 27th, 2017 I received an email from TEDWomen inviting me to share my poetry at their upcoming conference. The conference was themed ‘Bridges’ and featured 6 sessions — Build, Design, Connect, Suspend, Burn and Re-build — with each session featuring a 4–6 minute performance by a poet. As someone whose activism and organizing work is rooted in art and creativity, I decided to share a piece I felt most concretely illustrated my connection to the work on and off the page.
I chose to perform a piece I wrote 3 years ago called “The Joys of Motherhood”, a piece about Black maternity in the United States, and do a brief talk about how writing that poem allowed me to see how necessary art is in creating connections and facilitating understanding in popular education and movement building spaces.
On Nov 2nd, I attended an in-person rehearsal where I read my talk from my phone, then ran my poem in front of a small audience I assumed was with the TED team. And this is where my generally positive TEDWomen experience took a turn.
After finishing, I went backstage only to notice the curator of the conference walk up behind me. She informed me that there had “recently been 2–3 talks on the TED platform about ‘Black Lives Matter’”, and suggested that I “cut the ‘Black Lives Matter’ portion from my talk” to make it “just be about Reproductive Justice”.
I froze momentarily.
People assume that because I am a poet/writer/one who works with words that I always have them at the ready, but her statement caught me off guard.
I spat out that I could not cut ‘Black Lives Matter’ from my talk, since the foundation of the talk was how the Movement for Black Lives and Reproductive Justice were inseparable for me. It made me question whether she had read the draft I had sent to her weeks earlier, or if she had actually listened to the content of the talk I had recited not more than five minutes prior.
I walked back into the green room, a deep feeling of frustration finding a familiar home in my body.
I was frustrated that poets had already been given less that the usual amount of time allotted to TED speakers, only to have it suggested that I remove the flesh of my experience to give a bare bones performance.
I was frustrated that I had been invited to give a talk on an idea I deemed worth sharing, only to be told that it was not worth sharing anymore because something similar had been shared 2–3 times recently. As if that’s anywhere near enough. As if we should be grateful for the sound bites they choose to hear when it is comfortable for them, even though we are hoarse from shouting these truths daily. As if we shouldn’t demand more. As if we are not deserving of more than they offer. I went from frustrated to furious when my body remembered this wasn’t the first time it had felt like this. That before, I’d been invited to perform on other platforms, only to be asked to ‘cut’ or ‘tone down’ my messages or, ‘just do my poetry’ like a human jukebox.
I walked out, unable to breath the same air of camaraderie everyone else seemed to be filling their lungs and laughs with and set to work rewriting my talk.
Fortunately, the moments I feel most isolated and alone are the moments I am reminded I come from communities of care and unapologetic truths. I went back to the hotel and after conversing with some of my people, including the ones who had recommended me to the platform, I expanded my talk to name the interaction I had just had as part of a larger narrative of erasing explicitly Black narratives.
The day of the talk, I heard my bio being read and stepped out nervously. As often as people have the assumption that I always have words at the ready, people also assume sharing these words is easy for me.
It’s not.
I am human and I find I have fear ready to escape my throat just as often as stories and solutions. But, when I make a choice, I move forward and, no matter how shaky my voice is, I know the foundation of truth I stand on is solid.
To my surprise, I was met with a standing ovation. I felt a wave of relief, not at the reception of the talk, but that it was over with. And, I felt a sense of pride that I had managed to get through the talk sharing my whole truth, including the fear that often comes with speaking up for myself.
The moment I left the visible area of the stage, however, that feeling evaporated. I hadn’t even made it back to the green room when I was approached by a woman from TED who wanted to reassure me that TED would NEVER do such a thing, that she couldn’t IMAGINE that what I described happened, and that IF it did, it wasn’t meant in the way I took it…
I work for and organize with Women With A Vision, a group that fundamentally believes that we need to “Trust Black Women.” A group that sees everyday how difficult this phrase is in practice, despite people’s best intentions.
That night, I was reminded of this reality outside of my workplace. I had just given a TED talk that named my experience and the immediate reaction I was met with was disbelief and denial of my reality/experience. I told the woman from TED she didn’t have to ‘imagine something like that could happen,’ because it had already happened and I had described it mere minutes ago to an audience that included her.
At the final speaker gathering, I met with the woman who had suggested I cut my talk in private. The first thing she said to me was that I had ‘really misunderstood the intentions’ of her comments so she wanted to explain them to me because she believed ‘intentions were everything.’ She told me that she’d previously ‘given’ the TED platform to ‘Black Lives Matter’ speakers when ‘no one else would’ because the movement was important to her.
I found myself again momentarily frozen by her words.
I grew up with a mother who liked repeating the oft quoted saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Throughout my youth, I would hear her say, “to hell with good intentions” (which is actually the title of a speech I read when I was quite young due to my moms teaching). I couldn’t understand how she could be so dismissive of people’s intentions when she herself was one of the most well-intentioned people I had ever met. But eventually, I began to realize that my mom wasn’t just well-intentioned with respect to her goals, she was also careful in making sure that her intentions aligned with the impact that those who were impacted wanted. And if they did not, then something needed to be changed and reparations made to rectify the state of injury.
When I heard her say this, I was taken aback that someone tasked with coordinating a large-scale event such as TEDWomen had apparently never considered her intentions may not be enough (or even something to take into account). I told her that I didn’t think she said it with ill intentions, and yet, intentions matter less and less when they diverge from the impact and when the impact itself is denied in the name of honoring the purity of intentions.
After some other words, she told me I’d given her something to think about (intent vs. impact), and that she was appreciative that she was able to share her truth and intentions and we left on a cordial note.
In terms of intent vs. impact, I’m not sure what the impact of my talk will be. My intention was and is always to honestly share my story and increasingly, to be honest about the struggles I sometimes have sharing it.
I’m often painted as someone who speaks out ‘naturally’ and unapologetically.
But, unapologetic doesn’t mean unafraid or inherently brave.
Unapologetic doesn’t mean I don’t question myself constantly.
Unapologetic doesn’t erase my shyness and anxiety after I say or do something that unsettles me, then have to follow up with people afterward with no time to check in with myself.
I wish I could say speaking out or up is easy, but it’s not, especially when you find yourself the only one having a particular experience or understanding of an experience. It can be exhausting and often isolating, even (…actually…especially) if people support your message from a distance but do little to nothing to work alongside you; if they want you to be the “first domino” but refuse to ever fall themselves.
Paying homage to Toni Morrison’s call for artists to ‘never choose to remain silent’ I ended my talk the same way I am ending this post. By naming the reality of how I move in the world. That every time I speak out, it is because I am making a conscious choice to do so.
Black folks are wrong if we sit down during the national anthem or riot. The only thing that’s accepted is complacency. Colin Kaepernick is well within his right to opt out of the national anthem. Isn’t that what freedom is all about?
imagine someone telling you that saying your life matters is a political statement like why is me saying my life matters on a public stage so controversial ???
saying black lives matter is racial propaganda ???
While fandom racism is an issue that all people of color go through, it is a unique experience being black and experiencing racism/anti-blackness. I feel we don’t discuss how black fans often get the brunt of racism not just from white folks, but from people of color in general.
Not to demean or downplay with other people of color experience in terms of racism in the fandom, but imo, the ultimate form of racism and the most glaring form of racism is and will always be anti-blackness, often spurred from both white and non-black fans.
Like I wish conversations would stop being framed as poc vs. white fans, or that we stop demonizing just white fans when non-black fans are just as guilty, and often more so because we turn a blind eye to their racism.
I feel as if we miss the point, or fail to attack the problem at it’s core when we ignore just how BAD non-black fans are in terms of racism, and how their racism directed at black folks often gives white fans the validation to continue to be racist to black folks.
Yes, white fans are racist. But non-black fans are antiblack.
i’ve faced my fair share of antiblackness from white people, but i’ve also faced just as much from nonblack people. it is childish to assume that it’s black people and poc vs white people–it’s black people vs nonblack people at the core. because when issues of antiblackness arise we’re viritually alone.
i don’t think that all nonblack poc are like this, but i’ve met a majority whom are. i left my last fandom bcs of nonblack poc being antiblack. it’s certainly possible and they are sometimes as antiblack (if not more) than white people)
My favorite is when someone comes into my notes like “No that thing is not racist! And checkmate, I’m a POC! ”
If you identify yourself as “a POC” like that means “incapable of racism against Black people” I’m assuming you wouldn’t recognize antiblackness if it was right in front of your face (which, you know, it definitely is).
Preface:This is a paper which was produced for Rei Terada’s comparative literature class “Aversion to Politics” in May 2018. In examining representations and understandings of the political in Taxi Driver (1976) I attempt to analyze the way in which the antipolitical and ideologies of disenfranchisement are intimately tied to whiteness and racist violence, and conversely the way in which it is intentionally depoliticizing to obfuscate racist violence as “antipolitical”. In this essay the use of the phrase “political #1″ refers to organization for power that acknowledges one or more major antagonisms in society, while “political #2″ is meant to articulate the concrete system and process of governance in a state or other formal structure. I am also using the terms “antipolitical” to mean the rejection of political #2 and anything associated with it, and depoliticized to indicate a picture of society without its antagonisms, the antagonisms that underlie political #1.
In Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), racism is profoundly tied to the structures of the antipolitical; antipolitical thought is something which is only accessible, or at least only used by, the “disenfranchised” white man, and this subsequently ties into the way race is imagined in the film. The mythos largely being put forward is that Travis is (and, to an extent, white working-class men in general are) disenfranchised in a way which results in apathy towards the bureaucratic processes of political #2 and a general sense of festering anger which manifests as the antipolitical. Because antipolitical is tied to whiteness, the violence which results from it is frequently enacted on black and nonwhite characters or conceived of in connection to white imaginings of Blackness. Furthermore, one of the central issues that disenfranchisement seems to cause for Travis is his concern that he is surrounded by “the scum of the earth,” which has intentionally racist connotations in the way he understands Jewish and Black characters in particular to be this “filth,” but what seems to be hidden in this complaint is the notion that disenfranchisement of white men is bad because it forces them to be “reduced” to the same level as people of color and marginalized communities. As a result, there is also a way in which the film is depoliticizing these racist tensions by obscuring them within the general category of the antipolitical, rather than acknowledging the political #1 conflicts which create and are created by systemic racism.
Travis’s reoccurring assertion that the people surrounding him in the city are “the scum of the earth” is also very racially coded; he gets along, for example, with other white taxi drivers such as Wizard and Doughboy and wants to rescue Iris and possess Betsy, so they seem to be implicitly excluded from the “filth” he sees. On the other hand, Travis reacts very negatively towards characters such as Tom (who is played by a Jewish actor, and whose character is also coded as being Jewish), in a way which goes beyond something that might be understood to be simply competing over Betsy’s attention/affection. When Travis and Betsy talk in the diner, he tells her “’that fellow you work with, I don’t like him. Not that I don’t like him, I just think he’s silly’” (Scorsese 26:06). It is also important to note that Tom is the first person that Travis threatens with physical violence: as Tom is escorting him from the building after Travis attempts to confront Betsy for not returning his calls after the bad date, Travis shouts “take your hands off me!” and moves into a stance like he is going to punch Tom (Scorsese 39:32). The way Travis uses phrases such as “scum of the earth” and “filth” to describe what he understands to be the biggest problem with the city is a way of depoliticizing the racist implications of these phrases: Travis never candidly says he means Jewish people or people of color, or even uses racial slurs, instead his language is hedged in ways which imply that there is something other than racism going on, and therefore obscures the political #1 tensions. In contrast, Betsy and her whiteness alone seem to be immune to this “filth.”
Although Travis gets along with other (white) characters, Betsy is specifically singled out in that the first time Travis sees her, he says “she was wearing a white dress…out of this filthy mass she is alone. They cannot touch her” (Scorsese 10:48).
Again, there is a way the film depoliticizes the racist implications here: although Betsy emerges from a crowd of white people, the shot immediatelybefore she steps onto the screen features a crowd of black people walking down a street. The fact that Betsy’s whiteness is so oppositional to the “filth” surrounding her further asserts that Travis understands the filth/scum to be something which is not white—to be people who are not white. Furthermore, Travis’s perception that he and Betsy are connected is heavily coded in his belief that he, like her, is elevated and she, like him, is isolated, something which he articulates in a flowery speech wherein he tells her “I felt when I walked in that there was something between us…so that gave me the right to come in and talk to you” (Scorsese 25:24). There is also a way this parallels the earlier scene when Travis is at the porno theater and introduces himself to the cashier working the concession stand after asking for the cashier’s name. When she refuses to tell him, he continues harassing her saying “You can tell me what your name is. I’m not gonna do anything” until she threatens to and then follows through on calling for her (male) manager (Scorsese 08:54). What is significant here is not only the fact that the cashier rejects his implicit claim of entitlement to her when Betsy does not, but also the difference in the way in which Travis goes about making that assertion towards the cashier, who is a woman of color. Rather than the flowery speech about connection he gives when he claims he is entitled to Betsy, with the cashier he simply demands her name (only offering his own as an act of leverage in an attempt to make her feel obligated) and refuses to accept her refusal until she calls for a male coworker to intervene in the situation. It’s also important to consider that when Travis first meets Betsy he already knows her name; neither she nor Tom introduce themselves and Betsy’s name is not said, but as he goes to leave he tells her that his name is Travis and asks her “Betsy?” (Scorsese 23:17). Similar to the way Travis more bluntly acts on his feelings of entitlement towards a woman of color (and the way that this is acted out in the sexually charged context of a porno theater) is Wizard’s story about the woman in his back seat who changed her pantyhose so “I jump in the back seat, I whip it out…I’m gonna fuck her brains out,” which results in her supposedly giving him a $200 tip and her phone number in Acapulco, implying that the woman is Latina (Scorsese 15:56). The sexualization of and implicit articulation of white male sexual entitlement to women of color, although only small parts of the film, is significant because these concepts play into the broader way race and entitlement/violence are imagined.
In Taxi Driver violence against black people is central to both the anti-politics and the depoliticization of the film: there is, on the one hand, a way in which anti-black violence is the language of the “disenfranchised” anti-political white figures of the film, and there is, on the other, a lack of reaction and even an acceptance of this racist violence which depoliticizes and recodes this violence as being caused by something other than racism. One of the first things it is important to consider is the question of what is meant by “disenfranchisement,” and to what degree the term can be applied to Travis: if “disenfranchisement” is understood to be the result of the kinds of systemic processes which could be connected to political #2, it is hard to read Travis as being disenfranchised. Travis has an apartment, never seems to struggle when it comes to money, and gets hired on the spot for the first job he is shown applying for. If “disenfranchisement” is social, again it is hard to read Travis as being disenfranchised in this way: while he does seem to understand himself as being isolated and is unable to make the kinds of connections he wants, specifically sexual/possessive connections with women, he has a group of fellow cab drivers who seem to view themselves as friends and hold the same kinds of beliefs as Travis himself does. With this in mind, “disenfranchisement” becomes less of a reality and more of a symbolic state of mind which justifies both the antipolitical and the related violence, which again is primarily racialized/racist in nature. One of the first scenes where gun violence is brought into Travis’s consciousness is when a passenger (played, significantly, by Scorsese himself) has him stop outside of an apartment building and tells Travis that the woman’s silhouette in the second story window is that of his wife, but that it is not his apartment; he follows this by using a racial slur to describe the owner of the apartment, and then asking whether Travis knows what a .44 magnum will do to a woman’s face and genitals (Scorsese 42:20). This moment clearly has an effect on Travis, because when he decides to purchase a gun the first thing he asks the gun salesman is whether he has a .44 magnum (Scorsese 54:33). The first person that Travis shoots is a young black man robbing the bodega he is shopping in. After he shoots the man, the shop owner takes Travis’s gun and tells him not to worry about it, before beginning to beat the unconscious man to death (Scorsese 1:09:44). One of the ways in which this act is depoliticized is through the way the shop keeper so quickly normalizes and builds off of the Travis’s first act of violence; rather than indicating any distress over having witnessed someone get shot in front of him, the shop owner says that it’s the fifth time he has been robbed that month and starts shouting at the unconscious body “You wanna buy that little dope?” This, combined with the fact that the shop owner is Latino, becomes a way of displacing the racist element of the violence and shifting the motive behind the violence to something which disguises the tensions of racism and racial politics (in the political#1 sense) in 1970s New York. The shopkeeper and his reaction serve to obscure these tensions by presenting the violence as something with only an immediate cause (a response to muggings) and which cannot be categorized into a hate crime (the fact that the shopkeeper is a person of color himself and condones and expands upon the violence Travis commits is intentionally used as a distraction).
And yet racism, and specifically anti-blackness, play an undeniable role in Travis’s actions: the very next scene depicts Travis serenely pointing his gun at the television and closing one eye like he’s imagining aiming, followed by a cut to the image on the television: the face of a young black man dancing (Scorsese 1:09:53).
Even though the target of Travis’s planned massacre is a white senator, the people who Travis views as his targets and who are vulnerable to Travis’s violent actions are black people. Furthermore, there is also a way in which violence is connected to blackness, even when said violence is not being enacted on black characters: the first instance in which violence is mentioned in the film is when Travis says he heard on the radio some “crazy fucker” cut half of someone’s ear off over on 122nd street, which Wizard declares is “fucking Mau Mau land” (Scorsese 16:46).
Another of the ways anti-blackness is reflected through the way race is imagined in the film is through looking at the character of Sport, Iris’s pimp. In the original script Sport was a black man with a much smaller part (the scene where Sport and Iris dance together, for example, was ad libbed), and subsequently Travis killed only black people in the final shoot out (Macnab).
This moment, for example, which comes after Sport tells Iris not to forget how much he “depends” on and “needs” her, and then tells her to let him hold her and declares “I only wish every man could know what it’s like to be loved by you” implies a sense of intimacy and a complex (though obviously problematic) emotional attachment between the two characters (Scorsese 1:30:56). While Iris is twelve and Sport is undeniably a bad person for what he has done and is doing to her, the inclusion of this scene seems to be an intentional way of attempting to complicate the fact that Sport is a full-grown adult taking advantage of a twelve-year-old sexually, emotionally, and most likely financially. This is problematic in and of itself, but the fact that this complication of the dynamic was not a part of the original script in which Sport was a black man creates the implication that there is something more morally nuanced about a man pimping out a child if he is white.
Ultimately Taxi Driver (1967) articulates violence, specifically racist violence, as a tool of the antipolitical. Travis’s violence is caused, in part, because of his racist views, but the reason his violence is escalated from thought into increasingly violent actions is because of the way is actions are perceived by the antipolitical world around him. If the other taxi drivers had not contributed to a language of racialized violence, if the bodega owner had called the cops instead of taking Travis’s gun after he shot the mugger and then proceeding to beat the body, if Travis had been arrested and convicted for the final shoot out the entire narrative of the film would have shifted: as much as the film focuses on Travis, the way the larger society responds to and praises his actions speaks to the power antipolitical thought has. Ultimately, the film serves as a paradox of antipolitical and depoliticized thought in regards to racism: there is, on the one hand, a way in which racism and racist violence are articulations of antipolitical thought, and at the same time the recoding of racist thought and actions as being antipolitical in nature becomes a way of disguising the actual political #1 conflict involved in the creation and enaction of systemic racism, and therefore a depoliticization.
