LIFE/RACE
I love all of this beautiful talk about intersectionality I’ve been hearing since the Women’s March. People I’ve never heard talk about it before are talking about it now.
This is so great. And also a little bit infuriating.
Here’s why:
Just so that we’re all aware, Kimberle Crenshaw, the black female Columbia professor who created the term intersectionality, did so nearly 30 years ago.
30 years. And it’s just now starting to become mainstream, which means white people are starting to understand that this is important.
(I should be more specific and say Cis White people, Straight White people, mostly middle class White people. Mostly white women.)
I keep thinking about one of my favorite speeches from the Washington March, given by National Co-Chair Tamika D. Mallory. (you can find it at the 3 hr 35 min mark of this video). Up until her speech, I was feeling a little dissatisfied with what I was hearing about how now we’re all outraged, now we’re all feeling the pain, now we all understand injustice.
Um, no. Some of us have known what this has felt like for a very long time. If you are black and a woman in America, you have known for a very long time what outrage, pain, and injustice feel like. After the election, my mom and I were on the phone, (my mom who integrated a Detroit elementary school in an all-white area of the city, ALONE). As we decompressed from the results she said to me, “We’ll get through this. We’re black. This is nothing new for us.”
So, when Mallory got up and started her speech by saying “To those of you who experienced a feeling of being powerless, disparaged, victimized, antagonized, threatened, and abused. To those of you who for the first time felt the pain that my people have felt since they were brought here with chains shackled on our legs. Today, I say to you WELCOME TO MY WORLD! WELCOME TO OUR WORLD”, I finally felt like I was at the march. Like my people were at the march.
Now, I have a LOT of my own work to do when it comes to intersectionality. My work is primarily as a black woman who was raised middle class, highly educated, and handed every conceivable opportunity to shield myself from the vitriol and relentlessness of racism (this does work up to a point, but I want to be clear that there is NO amount of money, education, or power that shields people of African heritage from the pain of racism. NONE.) and the ways I learned to separate myself from the poor, the under-educated, and the many ignored members of my race and larger society.
My work is also as a Cis Straight Woman. I need to step out more in these identities to listen and learn from my trans brothers and sisters, those who identify as gay/bi/questioning, fluid, and more. I was raised in a culture that is homophobic, anti-gay, anti-everything-that-isn’t-white, heteronormative and male as much as the rest of us. It is dangerous for me to think I do not carry patterns of prejudice against people who identify differently than me.
It would be dangerous to ignore my own socialization.
Well before the election, actually (because black women tend to act more quickly), I had already reached out to some of my queer friends to tell them about the work I was doing. I wanted them to know that they can count on me to show up and be a better ally, and that I know that work lies in working on myself and my own misunderstandings from the inside out.
SO.
You may better understand why it is exciting to hear all this talk about intersectionality from people who’ve never spoken of it before, and it also feels SO LATE. It also feels like, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING ABOUT ALL THIS TIME?
At the New York March, I ran into a straight, white, male friend of mine. He is a dear friend I haven’t seen in a few years, partially because of what I’m about to share.
With tears in his eyes, he told me he was glad he ran into me. Back when we were hanging out, I (as the black women often are) was always trying to engage conversations about race and identity with this group of mostly white people. There was very little interest in these conversations. I was shut down with silence and disinterest over and over and over again. Eventually, I grew tired of trying to engage at all.
“I’ve thought about those days a lot since then,” he said, holding a #notmypresident sign close to his chest.
“I wish we would’ve listened to you more.”
Welcome to our world, my dear white friends. I truly do welcome you. But my question is,
Now that the urgency feels like it belongs to you, (even though it has always belonged to you), what will you do now?
Now that you are awake, how will you keep your eyes open?
Will you listen?
Will you work?