reflectionhousing

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INFLAMED p 24

”Decolonizing medicine begins with the project of rehumanization and reconnection, linking scans to people’s face; patients to their families, their cosmologies, communities, and histories; peoples to their lands and mountains and waters; and relatives to one another across the vast web of life. It is a process of imagining a “we” that is bigger than the sum of you and me. It involves a far wider community than Facebook can ever offer. It is the process of healing what has been divided and conquered. Resistance to colonial medicine is grounded in radical imagination: radical not as in somehow inconceivable or unattainable, but as prison abolitionist Angela Davis describes, as in ‘grasping things at the root.’ Decolonizing is training our gaze on the origins of suffering in order to uproot them. It is the ambition to build a community of respect for the ‘animacy of life itself.’ In a pandemic, it is recognizing that the source of the problem is not the vaccine or billions that are made from it, but the fundamental disconnection from fellow living beings that allowed the disease to flourish in the first place.”

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things tied to white supremacy to me

perfectionism

working all the time

basing my worth off of >>>>> end product, success

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decolonizing education is not possible

decolonizing education is not possible, because education was and still is a tool of colonization. some examples include:  - sending Native American children into boarding schools to force them to assimilate into white, colonizer culture - the stigmatization and rejection of AAVE in schools, telling kids that speaking “white” is right, and the languages they speak at home with their friends and family is wrong - the BIBLE

how can we reimagine sharing knowledge in a way where power dynamics, condescension, and assimilation are not at play? it already exists in many spaces. we can normalize having non-academics (and actual people who live and experience what they are studying) as panelists at conferences. we can have small group discussions instead of inaccessible roundtable discussions. we can have big meals together, healing spaces, workshops, storytelling circles, swimming classes, volunteer work days. what if we centered our educational institutions on SURVIVAL and helping each other thrive?

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Who taught me to be white?

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reparations / aid

“Redistributing hoarded resources is not an act of charity. It is an investment to rebuilding collective relationship. / The practice of making reparations does not need to stem from guilt. It can stem from desire. / The desire for individual liberation. The desire for familial liberation. The desire for collective liberation.” - instagram post from @whostoleserendib

Reparations should be given by the GOVERNMENT to descendants of slavery and Black people affected by harmful white-supremacist ideology. Although I am not as wealthy as the top 1% of the country, I still have benefitted a lot from anti-Black racism. 

I cannot provide reparations for the Black community, but I can fight for them. I can fight for funding to go towards helping Black communities thrive, I can provide my own funds to help Black communities live and create the future that they want to see. 

It is not my place necessarily to imagine this future for them. But it is my responsibility to clear the way for them so that they have the space and time to imagine and enact this future. The first step of this is understanding what the Black community wants (this is not a singular desire--all Black communities do not want the same thing). They deserve what white people have, and much, much more. 

They deserve 

Black-only healing and wellness spaces, where they are comfortable letting down their guard, where they are able to sigh and relax, decompress, be together, and feel loved and cared for. Spirits Up is a Black healing space that is raising funds for a permanent home in Germantown. This is their fundraiser.

Cultural organizations and institutions that preserve and celebrate their history. The Paul Robeson House is a house in West Philly where Paul Robeson, an artist, musician, athlete and socialist who fought for anti-racism and unionization. The Colored Girls Museum is a museum in Germantown dedicated to telling and deciphering the history of the African diaspora through expressions of the colored girl. Their fundraiser is here. The Dox Thrash House is another house museum in need of funds. Dox Thrash was an important Black printmaker in Philadelphia at the same time as the Harlem Renaissance. This is their fundraiser. Maybe every time we want to go see a show at the PMA, instead we can go to museums like this, or just donate our admission fees, or double them. 

Uplifting these spaces of healing and self-preservation for Black communities is crucial. Providing direct funds to those in need is crucial. Clearing the way for Black people to thrive in whatever they want to do--like Ocean Vuong paying for application fees for Black writers and writers of color. 

Black communities also deserve

(At the very least!!) Not to be policed at school, at the park, at night when they are asleep, when camping, when at Wal-Mart. What can non-Black people do to help this? It starts with not calling the police, and understanding why this is bad. It starts with being active bystanders in witnessing police violence. It starts with advocating for defunding the police, and not giving up. Black people deserve to be released from prison, and deserve to truly be free. Non-Black folks need to realize that they are taking part in holding the chains together, we need to end our relationship to white supremacy. 

Free food, free resources for their nourishment. I am dreaming of an economic model that is nondependent on the American economy, and instead based on gifts, trade, and community generosity instead of greed and individualism.

None of us are free until all of us are free.

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Black Panther Party Ten Point Program

re: reparations

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The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness, But to Abolish It

Last week I read this talk by Noel Ignatiev (who grew up in Philadelphia, btw)

I’ve since been thinking about ways that I have inherited and internalized whiteness. But it is a hard thing to crack into. I am not white, but I still have a majority of white friends. I still engage in predominantly white institutions. I still read Wikipedia articles written in English about Thai culture. I still read and (*trust* :( ) Bon Appetit magazine food journalism, even though their (now resigned) editor has worn Brown-face. Much of the media I consume as an American is white people profiting off the labor of Black and Brown people.

I watched this video of Malcom X speak about how White men have taught hate--

One answer is to fight ~love~against~hate~. Loving your non-White features. Something I’ve struggled with since... elementary school! Loving your non-White culture! Something that is hard with a language gap. Loving yourself so much, that you are no longer afraid to speak to White people about feeling like an outsider. I need to stop wanting to be part of the club of whiteness. I need to stop wanting to be accepted into traditional markers of success for an artist--like doing residencies, having gallery shows, getting a teaching gig, whatever. I can create my own opportunities and microutopias and exist outside these systems. I can help others see that whiteness is a club that perpetuates white supremacy, the murdering of Black folks by cops, the torture of wrongfully convicted incarcerated folks, the detention of undocumented youths, the neglect of Native American populations, and so. many. atrocities. They are all connected to accepting whiteness as power, as authority.

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The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.” 

Today I read this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates written in 2014 for the Atlantic. He traces the history of redlining and segregation mainly in Chicago’s Lawndale neighborhood. White people created the ghetto, and this is not just history, it is still happening with banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America within the past decade who prey on Black communities by encouraging them to take on subprime loans. The shadows of slavery in the South reverberate and echo in the desegregated, yet still systemically racist North. These small actions that banks and individuals do for wealth create long term (generational!) detrimental effects to Black communities. 

The damage is irreparable. It rips apart families. It creates unhealthy living and learning conditions for children. It creates and exacerbates stigmatized and ignored mental health issues within the Black community. 

What do reparations look like? It can’t be just a check to Black individuals. First, we must reckon with our privilege, how we have benefitted (culturally, materially) and profited from Black people. How we have been complicit in the constant and ongoing exploitation of Black people.

Reparations must also be a total restructuring of our values. It means disavowing whiteness, what whiteness has told us to value, and instead valuing, praising, uplifting Black people and communities. Equal is not the right word here, because holding Black people up to standards of whiteness reinforces whiteness (ie. President Barack Obama). We need to support Black communities and individuals so they surpass what defines white “success”, so that they can thrive. It means destroying white beauty standards, white-centered history, and CAPITAL. It means a reimagining of what WEALTH can be! 

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DEFINING YELLOW PERIL / BLACK POWER

This is an image of Richard Aoki holding a YELLOW PERIL SUPPORTS BLACK POWER sign. Richard Aoki was a prominent activist in the Black Panther Party, Asian activist organizations, and communist organizations in the 1960s and 70s.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was an organization led by Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Fred Hampton, and many more revolutionary Black heroes, whose aim was to end police brutality and the murder of black people. With this goal in mind, they also organized a variety of community social programs, like a Free Breakfast Program for Children as well as community treatment centers for diseases. We didn’t learn too much about the Black Panthers during high school history class because there were one of the more “militant” groups that opposed the narrative of peaceful protest and the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King Jr. (There is a lot to be said about this in comparison to peaceful/violent protests happening currently)

Richard Aoki played a large role in arming the BPP. He gave them guns that they would use for community patrols, to be witnesses of police brutality in their communities. Aoki died in 2009, after which, information from the FBI was released saying that Aoki was actually an FBI informant.

The FBI had a program called COINTELPRO whose goal was to “neutralize black national hate groups.” It basically did a lot of harm to the BPP by causing internal rivalries, publishing false news stories, etc.

I have seen a lot of Asian American friends & Asian American artists, repurposing or posting this “yellow peril supports black power” slogan, or specifically sharing this image of Richard Aoki. I am sometimes skeptical of whether we know the actual history behind it. Specifically the history behind the Black Panthers, and things that were littler known about them like the breakfast program, or how committed they were to protecting their community. (which reminds me a lot of like food and supply drives and mutual aid support happening right now)

Also, I’ve been thinking about what “yellow peril” actually means to me. Richard Aoki himself was a Japanese American, he and his parents were interned during WWII, and he grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood. He’s experienced a lot more yellow peril than I have. At the same time, he didn’t experience all of the racial violence that black people in Oakland did. Also, I don’t even call myself yellow, I’m Southeast Asian and brown. My parents came to this country by choice. I feel very privileged and yellow peril isn’t a great all-encompassing term for Asian Americans (not that there has to be one) unless you or your ancestors have directly felt the effects of imperialism, whether they were interned or came to this country as refugees, etc. Also, by naming these histories as yellow peril on a protest sign right next to the fight of Black people, are we drawing attention away from Black power? Asian Americans in the 1970s and before definitely experienced a lot more racial bias and hardship than we do now. It looks a lot more different now, as Asian Americans are even more strongly a model minority, working in Silicon Valley, and especially now that more wealthy Chinese immigrants are able to come to school here. I guess I fear that Asian Americans are hiding behind this slogan in place of doing actual research into how yellow peril has changed, and also what relationship it has to Black Power. 

I guess I’m just saying that this phrase comes from a very complicated history, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t use it. We should educate ourselves on its history, and challenge ourselves to dig deeper, to think about what yellow peril is for us currently and for our ancestors. We should educate ourselves on current issues that sound a lot like yellow peril, and fight for those who are experiencing it. Yellow peril includes the history that Chinese immigrants in the US were considered the first “illegal immigrants” in the late 1800s. So, we should fight for undocumented immigrants now. We should fight for releasing people from ICE detention centers because they sound like internment camps. We should educate ourselves on what is happening to Native American reservations during COVID-19. We should also fight to remind ourselves and others that actually, the first illegal immigrants on this land were white settlers. 

If we want to support Black Power, we also have to educate ourselves on the history of the black power movement. This is only just one way to come to terms with our role in perpetuating white supremacy, and decenter narratives away from whiteness.

FURTHER READING: ASSATA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY : Assata Shakur’s autobiography. She was a member of the Black Liberation Army. She has taken political asylum in Cuba since 1984, yet in 2017, Donald Trump called for her return to the US, calling her a “cop-killer”. Anyway this history is still very relevant and important to know about. If you buy this book, buy from a Black-owned bookstore!

Asian Americans - A documentary series on PBS about the history Asian Americans. Education on our own identities can happen simultaneously with education on Black history. 

SUPPORT: I’d also recommend you donate to a Chicago organization called ASSATA’S DAUGHTERS, they are a black women led group that does really good anti-police violence work in Chicago