Why aren’t we enough?!

In the wake of Brownfemipower shutting down her blog due to racism/racist appropriation, my question is: WHY?!

Why allow the very thing (RACISM) that all people of color should be united in fighting against, to drive us underground, drive us away from our task, to communicate our hard earned insights, fire and passion?

What does it say about our value system when white folks jes bein’ white folks - who we SHOULD know are the enemy - causes us to pack up our mic and pull the plug?

It sends a terrible signal, in my opinion. Perhaps it is simply the destruction of the illusion of the good, progressive white folk that caused BFP to make such a hasty, impolitic exit. What about all of the young, brown/black/red/yellow women who having viewed this spectacle, decide to go off into their corners, do their thing after years of reading about the power of WOC and seeing that power dissolve before an allegedly more powerful, admittedly more privileged, journalistic hack?!

There is NO excuse to not immediately decenter white women - and to rally round and CENTER, brown women, black women, red women, yellow women to this righteous cause…now that white feminists have shown what feminism really means to them:

“Kizzy, git in the kitchen and do them dishes…NOW!”

Aren’t we enough?!

What people of color need to do more and more is to turn to EACH OTHER. Regardless of language, national origin, religion, the white world rests on Plymouth Rock — which rests on all of us!

White folks stepping on our toes - which they so often do - causing such a pyrrhic reaction bespeaks an unhealthy relationship and perhaps, attachment to white folks. It validates their superiority, their power, it enacts/reenacts the silencing that is critical to their controlling us. Why volunteer?

Who benefits from BFP’s voluntarily servitude and acquiesence to the white feminist prerogative to take the brown fruit and not thank the one who slaved over the crop? White cannibals who’ve always feasted on dark meat. Methinks just the opposite tack is required.

I’ve read many of the posts regarding the Amanda Marcotte/Seal Press debacle…ain’t nuthin’ new under the sun, and yet…

Why don’t we have a press, or respect the press that we have? Why don’t we publish ourselves? Why do we concern ourselves with being “credited” for our spiritual property when they’ve been stealing both and more since the muthafucking Mayflower?! They won’t use it like we use it because we have or should have revolution on our mind, not a jive ass book deal.

No, as long as we center them, genuflect to them, beg and entreat them to, ‘pretty please understand our plight’…all of this prostration, without paying MORE attention to what we NEED to be building between brown you and black me…

Believe me, I don’t say this as someone whose never been where BFP is, but precisely because I have been there…and still, I have to keep watch and ferret out those ingratiating weeds that want to make white folks my superior, my God, my master.

To quote Nancy Wilson: “You can have him, I don’t want him, I don’t want him, you can have him, for he’s not, the man, for me!”

White feminists and white liberals/progressives are buttering their bread with white privilege in a cafe called Racism/White Supremacy. Most are completely clueless; a thimble full are in the process of getting it. Maybe. And a couple might even have it. We can’t afford any delusions, and certainly can’t expect square dealing from people who want us to validate their goodness and kindness, window-dress their image at the price of YOUR or MY sanity.

Somewhere an illusory bubble burst, full of white allies and cream pie that splattered in our faces. This was intolerable. Let’s grab a rag and clean each other up, keep each other honest and yell “DUCK” or “INCOMING” when the next bubble whizzes by.

We are enough.

Intelligence is often ephemeral, viral, acquired with little or no effort, surface; wisdom is hardboiled and hard-earned, rooted in lived truth and often, trauma.  One example…

Words by Zuky:

It seems to me that one of the principal sources of confusion when it comes to racial disourse is the stunning lack of clarity and consensus regarding the exact meanings and definitions of the words “racism” and “racist”. Those of us who spend significant time doing anti-racist work end up developing a variety of nuanced concepts surrounding these words, but many people never explore those meanings and instinctively respond to talk of racism with strong emotions and weak understandings. Racism is a complex multi-dimensional interdisciplinary subject which cannot be reduced to an absurdly-shallow bifurcation of the populace into laudable “not racists” and condemned “racists”. Racism is an overarching, interlocking set of economic, political, social, and cultural structures, beliefs, and actions which systematically advantage one racial group at the expense of all others. A statement, thought, belief, assumption, or action can be described as racist when it plugs into the overarching grid of racism, like a node which lights up once it plugs into its compatible network, thus transcending an individual act of bigotry or prejudice and fusing into broader institutions and societal forces.

As for defining what makes an individual person “a racist”, I think it’s a pretty fuzzy area, and not a particularly fruitful intellectual direction. Most anti-racists are much more concerned with identifying, understanding, and dismantling racism, than in exposing any individual as “a racist”, whatever that means. Clearly, there are hate-crime types out there who organize their lives around advancing white supremacist violence and such; but most of the racism that people of color deal with in our day-to-day lives — especially those of us who interact with a lot of white liberals — is far more subtle and covert, more of a background buzz than an in-your-face threat. White liberal racism tends to manifest in unspoken assumptions, attitudes, and social dynamics which normalize and center white privilege, while deprioritizing, marginalizing, and dismissing the voices, perspectives, experiences, histories, cultures, agendas, and initiatives of people of color. White liberals who engage in these behaviors aren’t “racists” in the same sense as the hate-crime types, but they are nevertheless participating in the replication and perpetuation of racism. Pointing this out is not “playing the race card”; it is accurate socio-political observation. Pointing this out is not the same as running around indiscriminately shouting “racist!” at every white person within earshot in some kind of rageful frenzy; it is constructive anti-racist critique aimed at illuminating an important but dimly-lit pattern, for the purpose of healing wounds which continue to bleed our society and our own humanity.

From the “Anarchist People of Color, Race, Anarchy, Revolution” website:

“Anarchism calls for a fundamental transformation of society. No messianic leader guides the flock to the promised land, where the government tries to kill them all. With anarchism, no shadowy leadership clique calls the shots for our community. An anarchist solution means people are all taught the lessons and go forward to teach our own lessons so that everyone in the community can lead the struggle. It is a radical departure from the power politics that have been at play in many communities of color. Anarchist revolution is what is needed for people of color now.

People of color are in the crosshairs of this system every single day. Now is not the time to mourn, but to build with determination for anarchist revolution.”

Do you want a fundamental transformation?

I’ve been thinking about the meaning of Wesley Snipes’ pending incarceration. As one who has followed a similar path and refuses to pay for my oppression and that of other black people and people of color worldwide, what does a three-year term for tax evasion REALLY mean?!

It means that any action against the system will be met with maximum retaliatory force. Stealing the wealth of the people and using it to oppress the people is divine law, according to the maniacs who run this thing. And what if we were all Wesley’s, what if we all knew that the 16th Amendment was a fraud, that the Federal Reserve is a private bank, NOT a government concern.   “We are not consumers; “WE are what’s being consumed!”

Do you want a fundamental transformation or to exchange seats on the Titanic, a ship headed for massive icebergs, a ship that mows down black and brown and red fish on its queasy path to oblivion?!

Reformism - voting in new masters, a female or black male overseer for the global plantation - is status quo, handkerchief head politics/existence par excellence. Revolution means that there are no more Gods, masters or slaves. YOU are your own overseer, YOU are the boss of YOU!!

Can you git wit that?!