shit seems to be getting a bit too real…
and folks are reaching in from the outside, in that “desert of the real”,
so i think I’mma chill on tumblr for a while.
this shit is no bueno
My nerves are raw and my patience is thin
I don’t know Dorothy and I’m sure she’s a lovely person. I’m just tired of having to dissect myself over and over into a million different pieces just so folks can SEE ME and respect my personhood as a Black American who has no choice over my racialization. Even though who we are is just as complex and diverse and deserving of respect as other people of color. And what annoyed me about Dorothy’s post is how it ERASED the long memory of Black Americans and our very intimate knowledge and relationship with(in) “tri racial isolates.” It annoyed me because there is story and history and family and blood behind Black folks taking jabs at Melungeons (and many other US mixed race groups) who don’t want to be Black.
Mostly I’m just tired of being treated like a black hole where the logic that applies to other POC’s existence goes to die.
It’s so damn difficult to get people to understand that the way in which the (identity) politics of multiraciality are founded on an antiblack logic.
For times like these, I come prepped with links:
Jerome comes prepped with awesome and sunshine. It is the nature of his being. Fact.
right back at cha :)
My nerves are raw and my patience is thin
I don’t know Dorothy and I’m sure she’s a lovely person. I’m just tired of having to dissect myself over and over into a million different pieces just so folks can SEE ME and respect my personhood as a Black American who has no choice over my racialization. Even though who we are is just as complex and diverse and deserving of respect as other people of color. And what annoyed me about Dorothy’s post is how it ERASED the long memory of Black Americans and our very intimate knowledge and relationship with(in) “tri racial isolates.” It annoyed me because there is story and history and family and blood behind Black folks taking jabs at Melungeons (and many other US mixed race groups) who don’t want to be Black.
Mostly I’m just tired of being treated like a black hole where the logic that applies to other POC’s existence goes to die.
It’s so damn difficult to get people to understand that the way in which the (identity) politics of multiraciality are founded on an antiblack logic.
For times like these, I come prepped with links:
tartuffe, the spry wonder dog
Because I didn’t have time to say this myself….
there are some things that folks’ll say about the israeli occupation of Palestine that always grind my gears. things like, ‘we shouldn’t focus on assigning blame…’ or ‘it’s important to hear both sides of the story…’ or ‘both sides have made mistakes…’
and those are obnoxious things to say because they eschew power relations from the conversation. it’s depoliticizing because it removes what is happening from the realm of conflict and contestation. that is, conflict over who one ought to support and contestation over what course of action should be advocated. treating ‘both sides’ as though they are on an equal playing field, and refusing to make a decision over what is right and what is wrong, reduces the situation to something about which we feel uncomfortable feelings.
we stare longingly at the situation and wish for it to be resolved without making us feel any worse. this is a particularly narcissistic method of maintaining the status quo by refusing to participate.
not surprisingly, it is often the people who want to depoliticize conflicts who accuse those who’ve taken sides in engaging in ‘wankfests’ or ‘partisanship’ or some equally meaningless complaint.
for the record, israel is a colonial power and if you don’t support Palestinian self-determination you’re on the wrong side. at the very least, an ethically-minded person ought to support the long-standing international consensus that israel end their settlements program and return to the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders.
but this post isn’t really about israel and Palestine, but that situation brings to the forefront a particular dynamic. the dynamic by which political conflicts are depoliticized by folks who support the status quo. and, I should add, their supposed concern for ‘hearing both sides’ is the cloak they wear to pretend that they’re actually very concerned, politically active citizens. a lot of time and money can be spent in the service of maintaining unethical relations of power under the guise of ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’ political activism.
that dynamic is precisely what is at work when discussions about antiblackness are reframed as ‘who’s most oppressed?’ or ‘which oppression is worst?’ or ‘who is right?’ or ‘who is most racist?’
‘antiblackness’ is a description of the power, force, and violence that produced and constantly reproduces the modern world.
you know who interprets that as mere ethnic chauvinism? as Black people claiming they have it worst of all? and as claiming nobody else in the world ever suffers systemic or unsystemic violence?
people who eschew the reality of antiblackness as a world-making force.people who are invested in maintaining a particular antiblack status quo.
what is to be avoided here is the naive view that nobody likes power and oppression. that power and oppression are’bad.’power suffuses everything, and power is enjoyable, and power makes ice cream sweeter and orgasms longer.
so before you—you non-Black person who claims to be so interested in ending power and oppression across the globe—start pointing fingers at folks for being antiblack (according to whatever your understanding of that is), stop and consider whether you’re trying to deny how your own enjoyment of the world is tied up in antiblackness by externalizing it onto the person of someone who said or did something objectionable.
or, better yet, do both. attack outward while attacking inward. but don’t throw wrenches in the gears whenever people start talking about antiblackness by raising your misguided issues with ‘building a hierarchy of oppressions’ or ‘playing the oppression olympics’ or any variation thereof.
Re: A CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY: How Asian American experiences and discussion is co-opted into a wankfest on antiblackness by irresponsible fucks
A long rebuttal to colorblinding’s ‘chronology’ of how nothing she has said is antiblack in any way, shape, or form, and how ‘people just love to blow shit up and love dramu so much that they can’t get their heads out of their asses long enough to actually be responsible and do all the reading’ is under the cut.
For the record, I did all the reading.
Dammit James! I had just read Helen Jun’s incredibly racist Black Orientalism article and was about to do exactly what you did in the latter half of your post…but you beat me to it.
Meh, better you than me.
wow….
um…colorblinding just took it to a whole other level.
i’m….impressed.
its like @negrosunshine’s prediction extended past black history month
welp
Say what?[still] researching to see if there has ever been any public discourse/criticism of ntozake’s work with robert mapplethorpe.
…even more interested to read/hear
why
she choose
to work with him.she wrote the foreword for his book ‘Black Book’
O_O
nothing else rhymes: weeks
and then I wonder ‘well, what is futurity in the absence of linear temporality? can there be a non-linear anti-futurity? is this the project of Black feminist theory (not to mention afro-pessimism)? what is the future without liberal progress narratives? if Black feminist theory takes as its
…All of my work is on this: the disarticulation of time and space, of the universe—the universe is at stake, and that isn’t an overstatement.
Attenuated time, the notion of quantum potentiality, the concept of infinity, the figure of the black hole—all of this drives my work with blackness. Giant, massive, awesome, insurmountable questions—impossibility. A challenge.
my work is concerned with similar issues, if not the same, though not grounded in quantum physics. at least not yet.
i’m not concerned so much with linearity or rupture as with complete stillness or the glacial, paradigmatic, time. I suppose one could call it “deep time”, akin to “deep space”.
