It has been very difficult to begin writing this post, the silently blinking cursor being the logical form for the content at hand. Often, we experience repeated or sustained sensations, and then name them with an emotion, followed by finding a narrative to justify the name (Tingling eyes – I am lonely – I moved to Flin Flon and don’t know anyone). Sometimes it’s not affective but intellectual, chronic ideas or thought patterns that loop. And sometimes the name comes first.
Stuck.
The paralysis started about a month ago: I read some words that resonated and instantly imagined making some art with them for my dear friend’s mother, like paint them or thread them through photographs or whatever. He and I spend hours and hours talking every week, often about our mums and their majesty. He and his mum are Black, and so are my own sons, so certain themes come up frequently; the words I had just read expressed one of them beautifully. Oh, I so enjoy planning presents! But right away…
I can’t possibly create this piece. Though I am Indigenous, I look white and so can choose to enjoy the fruits of white supremacy, and cannot deny the privilege of having my identity constructed within and by its social world. The words were written by a Black woman; here would be me, nothing new under the sun, benefiting from Black women’s genius and talent, wringing satisfying emotions for myself out of her labour. Zoicks.
Sure, I might have made things a bit simpler for myself by considering actions like attribution, permission, and compensation, but I was not into making things simpler. I was into agonizing over how quickly this train of thought had killed my mojo to make something nice. I was into seeing this small moment as a symptom of a chronic liability of the “Left”, which it sort of is. So many of us agonize. And although our carefulness, our endless doublechecking overthinking, is animated by a will towards love and justice, I’m afraid it might be slowing our responses down too much. We may not have the luxury of time just now.
But love and justice aren’t luxuries – they have to be the foundation. See the bind? One friend says she doesn’t feel comfortable with describing negative personality traits as “dark”. A colleague asks me privately and earnestly if it’s okay that they refer to the quick and necessary discussion they just had with a peer in the corridor as a “pow wow”. These concerns are not only sincere, but are also fundamental requirements of a coherent political and philosophical orientation, because we know that word choice shapes reality, while appropriation does real, material harm.
We on the so-called Left are famously obsessed with process, with confirming that everyone is heard, that consent is informed and uncoerced, often to the point where plans for action are drowned in checks and balances. We call meetings to plan meetings, and I’ve endured more than a few conversations that are stilted and alienating because people keep diligently securing explicit permission to ask questions before asking them. And we do all these things because we have experienced and/or observed the consequences of not doing them: unexamined acts unwittingly upholding white supremacy, people being tricked and silenced, and the bullying and boundary-crossing that happen in any group when no intention is devoted to equitable process.
This is not a new idea, this frustration with how long it takes to be so careful. Meanwhile, the so-called Right, especially its most recent and terrifying iteration, moves very decisively. Anti-racist activists would have to compromise most of what we value in order to act with the same speed, reducing our messages to provocative sound bytes and charging ahead. In other words, we would have to use the master’s tools.
Some days lately I’m so angry that I don’t care. I just want to smash the house. Watching the scenes from the States, from George Floyd to January 6th, and the scenes here in Canada of anti-Indigenous racism simmering… I can hear the lid rattling on the pot a bit more clearly every day. I’m in a panic, an emergency; we all are. And right away I challenge, who is we? The building burns down while I try to formulate the most expansive and accurate answer, the one that acknowledges everyone. Can’t I just pull the little glass bar on the red alarm thingy? -No. Stuck again.
But not forever: I was finally able to start writing this when I remembered that binaries never allow for the whole truth. I wonder if one approach to getting unstuck is realizing there may be much we can still do in the space between the two extremes of immobility and storming the capital.
It’s not easy to figure out what that is these days, partly because it’s more and more difficult to use words without consensus on what they mean. Socialism, feminism, racism, white supremacy, conspiracy, anti-vaccination, defunding police: how long would a dialogue between any two people last before disagreement on their definitions arose? Not as long as it would have a year ago, but I can’t let that totally immobilize me.
Sometimes we just have to try things first and analyze (or beg forgiveness) afterwards. Sometimes we have to trust our instincts. When in front of a source of information, for example, if it’s really opaque whose interests are being served, I’ve begun simply asking myself what company do they keep? They may not be “bad people”, but if Qanon is only a few removes away, I’m done; I don’t have time. Kind of like that meme about Trumpists: they may not all be white supremacists, but they all decided white supremacy wasn’t a deal breaker for them. This logic has freed me up to make some decisions a bit faster.
If I can stay honest with myself about what animates my decisions, and relentlessly strive to make that thing love, I believe this house can be dismantled, with no need for the master’s tools. My same dear friend suggested that maybe we are termites, infiltrating it in ways that can’t be detected at first. Making nests inside, then before you know it… one certainty is that there are far more of us. Way more. And the seat of power is terrified. Aren’t they acting terrified, with levels of chaos and violence and vitriol that only fear can engender?
Anyhow, I’m not making that piece of art for his mum; I guess I wrote this instead, and have tried to weave into it the same tenderness, humility and hope that she may have found there.
The quotation I had wanted to render was from Ibi Zoboi in the Acknowledgements at the end of Punching the Air, a book of poetry (with Yusef Salaam) I bought my sons for Christmas: “…I prayed and continue to pray for your safety and I wish for your joy, your bliss. My freedom is your freedom. We are links on a chain, bound to each other.”