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.
“We have to be maternal, we have to be the savior, we have to make that white character feel better, we don’t have vaginas as black women,” she said. “I got tired of celebrating movies that didn’t have me in it. I don’t mean me as Viola, I mean me as a black woman.
Sexual violence prevention programs—often delivered as discussion-based workshops directed towards youth—are crucial to ensuring community safety. Participants often learn important skills towards ending sexual violence, like building empathy and bystander intervention. But these programs have also demonstrated a terrible shortcoming: When program participants are presented with situations of sexual violence, they are less likely to empathize with Black victims, more likely to blame them, and less compelled to intervene to help.
Sexual violence prevention programs must stop treating the intersection of race, ethnicity, and sexual assault as only a footnote. Racism is much more intertwined with sexual violence than our society likes to admit. Ignoring this fact will only result in the further criminalization and victimization of the same Black students these programs claim to help.
The most glaring issue with sexual assault prevention programs lies in its most useful tool: roleplaying exercises and scenarios designed to build empathy or encourage bystander intervention. Participants are given hypothetical sexually violent situations and are asked to intervene to help the victim or empathize with them.
In many versions of prevention curricula, most of the victims have “white” or generic names. This causes Black participants to feel that they are being erased, due to our deeply racist ideas of what a “perfect victim” looks like. For some organizations, the response has been to include more victims in the scenario with “Black” names, which studies show leads participants to blame the victim and show lower empathy for them.
The solution isn’t to stop including Black victims in these scenarios, it is to make sure that the scenario explores the role of race in the sexually violent situation, not glosses over it. In the discussion, participants should intentionally be asked open-ended questions about how society treats Black people who disclose sexual violence, and what specific stereotypes contribute to Black victims—particularly Black women—not being believed.
In prevention programs, detailed and complex discussions about the role of race in sexual assault are often ignored in favor of simple solutions. In my experience as a consent educator, when facilitators mention that the vast majority of survivors (90-98%, and probably more) are telling the truth about being sexually assaulted, some Black male teenagers will then ask about the historical fact of white women lying about rape by Black men. While most facilitators would never demonize this question, it’s common for them to simply reiterate the statistic and move on. This results in Black students feeling unheard and invalidated.
Rick Riordan’s response to the racism and hatred directed at Leah after she was cast as Annabeth:
“Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase”
“This post is specifically for those who have a problem with the casting of Leah Jeffries as Annabeth Chase. It’s a shame such posts need to be written, but they do. First, let me be clear I am speaking here only for myself. These thoughts are mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect or represent the opinions of any part of Disney, the TV show, the production team, or the Jeffries family.
The response to the casting of Leah has been overwhelmingly positive and joyous, as it should be. Leah brings so much energy and enthusiasm to this role, so much of Annabeth’s strength. She will be a role model for new generations of girls who will see in her the kind hero they want to be.
If you have a problem with this casting, however, take it up with me. You have no one else to blame. Whatever else you take from this post, we should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong. As strong as Leah is, as much as we have discussed the potential for this kind of reaction and the intense pressure this role will bring, the negative comments she has received online are out of line. They need to stop. Now.
I was quite clear a year ago, when we announced our first open casting, that we would be following Disney’s company policy on nondiscrimination: We are committed to diverse, inclusive casting. For every role, please submit qualified performers, without regard to disability, gender, race and ethnicity, age, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or any other basis prohibited by law. We did that. The casting process was long, intense, massive and exhaustive.
I have been clear, as the author, that I was looking for the best actors to inhabit and bring to life the personalities of these characters, and that physical appearance was secondary for me. We did that. We took a year to do this process thoroughly and find the best of the best. This trio is the best. Leah Jeffries is Annabeth Chase.
Some of you have apparently felt offended or exasperated when your objections are called out online as racist. “But I am not racist,” you say. “It is not racist to want an actor who is accurate to the book’s description of the character!”
Let’s examine that statement.
You are upset/disappointed/frustrated/angry because a Black actor has been cast to play a character who was described as white in the books. “She doesn’t look the way I always imagined.”
You either are not aware, or have dismissed, Leah’s years of hard work honing her craft, her talent, her tenacity, her focus, her screen presence. You refuse to believe her selection could have been based on merit. Without having seen her play the part, you have pre-judged her (pre + judge = prejudice) and decided she must have been hired simply to fill a quota or tick a diversity box. And by the way, these criticisms have come from across the political spectrum, right and left.
You have decided that I couldn’t possibly mean what I have always said: That the true nature of the character lies in their personality. You feel I must have been coerced, brainwashed, bribed, threatened, whatever, or I as a white male author never would have chosen a Black actor for the part of this canonically white girl.
You refuse to believe me, the guy who wrote the books and created these characters, when I say that these actors are perfect for the roles because of the talent they bring and the way they used their auditions to expand, improve and electrify the lines they were given. Once you see Leah as Annabeth, she will become exactly the way you imagine Annabeth, assuming you give her that chance, but you refuse to credit that this may be true.
You are judging her appropriateness for this role solely and exclusively on how she looks. She is a Black girl playing someone who was described in the books as white.
Friends, that is racism.
And before you resort to the old kneejerk reaction — “I am not racist!” — let’s examine that statement too.
If I may quote from an excellent recent article in the Boston Globe about Dr. Khama Ennis, who created a program on implicit bias for the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Medicine in Boston: “To say a person doesn’t have bias is to say that person isn’t human. It’s how we navigate the world … based on what we’re taught and our own personal histories.”
Racism/colorism isn’t something we have or don’t have. I have it. You have it. We all do. And not just white people like me. All people. It’s either something we recognize and try to work on, or it’s something we deny. Saying “I am not racist!” is simply declaring that you deny your own biases and refuse to work on them.
The core message of Percy Jackson has always been that difference is strength. There is power in plurality. The things that distinguish us from one another are often our marks of individual greatness. You should never judge someone by how well they fit your preconceived notions. That neurodivergent kid who has failed out of six schools, for instance, may well be the son of Poseidon. Anyone can be a hero.
If you don’t get that, if you’re still upset about the casting of this marvelous trio, then it doesn’t matter how many times you have read the books. You didn’t learn anything from them.
Watch the show or don’t. That’s your call. But this will be an adaptation that I am proud of, and which fully honors the spirit of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, taking the bedtime story I told my son twenty years ago to make him feel better about being neurodivergent, and improving on it so that kids all over the world can continue to see themselves as heroes at Camp Half-Blood.”
Sure, I try. But when your point is not against something I was saying but something I did not disagree with, I‘m afraid I fail to understand what you want from me.
@thisismisogynoir I know that black female representation is important. That’s why I reblogged it. That’s why I put my addition in the tags to emphasize that that’s the post that’s important. I was just reacting to the question (why did nobody complain that Percy is blonde?) because I did complain. But I knew that that was not the point of the post and that’s why I put it in the tags.
And I never said anything about a white boy being “properly” blonde as he “should“??? I don’t know why you reproach me with that???
This is not an aggressive post. I can tell you were kinda angry and that was not my intention. :)
Nah, it’s okay, but I’m talking about the fact that the first thing you mention is Percy’s blond hair. My point is that the focus of the discussion should be on Annabeth being Black, not who is blonde or who is not blonde. That’s all.
Also you could’ve just replied to the post itself or reblogged it instead of making your own so that most people can see both sides? Making a singular post with little to no context seems like you’re trying to make people biased. Just a thought.
(cws for racism/anti-blackness, misogyny, acephobia)
Following asexuality activist Yasmin Benoit on twitter has been one blunt example after another of the aggression and hostility that aces of color have to face, and how often every imaginable bigotry will get piled behind a more “acceptable” acephobic face to attack and tear them down.
In the name of questioning her identity as asexual, the author of the review she shared is practically playing anti-blackness bingo. We’re constantly hearing “teenagers can’t say they’re asexual! they’re too young! that inherently sexualizes other teenagers!” And then here, they say that because a black 14 year old went to Pride, she obviously was “interested in sexual activity” as a way to frame (and undermine) a later “swap” to asexuality.
It’s no surprise, but it’s wild these people can call themselves feminists when they see “beautiful black woman” and start sexualizing and objectifying her like the most stereotypical perverted men. “This 14 year old went to pride, so she’s interested in sex!!” sounds stolen straight from predatory rape culture, not to mention homophobia. “She’s dressing too revealing, this makes her interested in sex” is ALSO straight from predatory rape culture. The description of what she was wearing sounds straight from some misogynistic novel that we’d drag to hell and back for describing women by the state of their breasts. And yet it all becomes fair game to try to set up some kind of contradiction between a black woman’s stated identity and her existence.
