Having Read The Fine Print……: The Burning House.
The Burning House
“ I feel like I am asking my people to assimilate into a burning house”- MLK
Dear Madmaba,
so sorry about the delay but I needed to take time to think about what I am actually trying to say because , while now more than ever I truly to want to connect and communicate with those interested in making change and forging bonds, I am less interested in talking to people whose only goal is to shore up their illusions of progressiveness. I believe the first about you , others are questionable. In a world were desperation for change is rampant, there SHOULD be a deep examination of what we have done,are doing, and how we should move forward. This call for discussions from middle class well off white people, and ” interest” from ensconced academics not only rings false, it seems more and more tawdry and woefully inadequate.
Let’s talk is something a high school guidance counselor says to a sulky youth or concerned superior says to underling. You have to say “ let’s talk” because bluntly it is accepted that your interactions don’t occur in the same place. Inside that same thread was a comment from A REAL LIVE WOMAN OF COLOR TALKING ABOUT WHY SHE FELT DIVIDED FORM THE CONFERENCE.
Not just ANY woman of color but a prominent blogger, a member of the HISTORY OF WOMEN’S INTERNET and an award winning writer . A scholarship winner, someone they wanted there so bad they paid for her to be there.
And she blatantly IGNORES IT.
AS WELL as another women of color who speaks about her concerns with feminism.
She IGNORES IT.
So she can tell a story.
If she doesn’t want it to be white women’s vision of feminist thought. Why doesn’t she link to what seems like the WOMAN WHO MADE THE CRITIQUE ( or a similar one) or a woman of color who wrote about HER experience at NN09?
This gaffe isn’t uncommon ( i am leaving out the women who equated progress with who you got to drink with at a bar), just terrifyingly bad strategy for a changing world. Especially a progressive media.
In a time when folks make logical decisions between food or healthcare, when magazines are folding left and right from folks unable to waste time. Media AND progressive movements are desperate to appear relative and sustainable . Targeting a demographic of POC and Queer and Disabled and poor and and and and people who they have LONG LONG ignored if not inherently devalued. Except to prove the erudition of the writer(s)The intimation that this a favor or a thing that hasn’t been covered is no longer acceptable as a caveat but for progressives an illustration of gross negligance.
I half participated in discussion about whether it was a good strategy to encourage kids to become part of institutions that would not support them. One of the salient points that was brought up was that , it is only by being inside these institutions could we force salient change?
My question is do we really want to save these institutions. Do we really want to save these movement/media/companies/schools/groups?
When the FEMINIST MAJORITY says it’s too late to prosecute the rape of a young girl ( and oddly enough the campaign mounted is towards Whoopi Goldberg and not Tilda Swinton , Natalie Portman, or any of the other people who in saying drop his case said the EXACT SAME THING) , what is there to save?
And please understand this not from the moral high ground. I don’t want it. I keep reading this over and over and over about what power would convey and truly I don’t ever actively want that. Having the moral high ground only means I’m not in the fray.
And at the end of this I have to live with people , sometimes in close quarters, sometimes ina global sense, but I can not and find it hard to imagine continuing to do work from the perspective that I am “better” than someone else , because that hierarchically kyriarchial thought process does not challenge what I think most of us are fighting.
The idea that some one is inherently better than ourselves.
Before I am patted on my unrealistic head, I don’t believe this extends to having skills , or talents, or gifts.
But that somehow before any of those are mentioned someone inherently IS better . There existence IS better.
THAT better , that leads, to there words being developed instead of smothered, them getting two paragraphs rather than two words, the better that means that no matter what they will always be the reference point , rather than a parallel. The better that means no one ever questions, whether they should eat, walk the streets in peace , tell their stories without violence.
and if we are honest if we are real , that is NOT the truth of our country, of our movement, of our lives.
That seam that someone else’s lived existence is conversational , that someone else’s personal mindset and well being is bargain-able is the problem. It can be based on race, gender,ability,. It comes from history personal prejuidice and fear but the fundamental belief that we are weighable and measurable will ALWAYS lead to someone being found wanting.
My response to that conversation about institutions was
No.
We do not.
We do not send ourselves blind into places that do not support us. Sadly there isn’t a way for many of us not on the heavy side of the measurement to avoid that . Because to beat the metaphor into death
When asked to be part of the burning building we are being always asked to save it.
Some may go in, and for those we must provide support and protection and preparedness . Which means we must be truthful in how bad the fire actually is. Not advertising it in hopes of what will msot make them come out.
and more importantly we must build strong places and skills and water and people for those they bring out. Because teh question that is forefronting my mind is not teh state of teh building
but teh lives inside.
Conversations build up teh need to save the building, teh caucaus, the secrecy, because it justifies the protection of continually using resources but what saves teh lives ?
That is what I need to knwo, what will make THIS conversation different?
What will make it so that when a WOC speaks she is believed ?
What will make it thata disabeled woman doesn’t have to wait on a timetable for someone to behave decently?
What will make the news cycle less important than justice and equity?
Where is the dangerous idea?
