#this is how we get the structural racism of the 'gifted' system

[borrelia]

I've probably asked this before but i dont remember </3 I still want to know tho

[horizon-verizon]

Trying to put this into words that make sense, but there is an intersection between class, racism, projection and power fantasy when we talk about the Nettles plot and the way it has been used.

Hotd isn't interested in following world-building rules but in some cases that already has a foothold with what some fans already thought.

I don't know how to deny that in AsoIaF magic has a close relationship with blood and, as much as it bothers people, with lineage. Valyrians have dragons. The blood of the first men can change skin, control and see through the eyes of other animals.Both have some kind of seers, both achieved that power in the first instance by dealing with blood magic and making pacts with naturally magical creatures (Correct me if I'm wrong but it's implied that FM didn't have magic before dealing with the children of the forest and adopting their gods). You also have another type of magic that is much more nebulous and that in many cases depends on perception and symbolism to use what little they can.

This is where things start to get thorny, because no one wants to acknowledge that attitude and aptitude co-exist when having this discussion. At least some of the magic can be learned as the red priests and maesters do, but a lot of it... It's blood-bound and that's a fact.The Stark children's ability comes from their father, FM lineage, and it's partly implied that they are *more* magical for being Stark. Within them it is assumed that Sansa does not have the ability not because she does not have it but because she turned her back on him and Bran is naturally *more* capable and powerful.

Somehow this is never discussed when talking about FM. Some people have the gift, others simply don't and the particular form of their visions and powers can be perfected but not learned. On the contrary, when talking about the Targaryens, people seem... Wanting to release the ability and give it to the people?

Oh, but the Targaryens wanted to keep the dragons for themselves! It's what they say and they're not wrong, but the way they write it sounds like the Targaryens=The Man™, The oppressor, the system that must be eradicated because it is the root of all evil and... No.

The dragons function as property, a very powerful property to which they put terms and obstacles in order to access it in a hierarchical society.Just as nobles have rights to lands, dragon lords had rights to their dragons. One of the ways they chose to keep these resources concentrated It was through marriage.Friendly reminder that the incest taboo is sociocultural and its objective is simply to say what marriages are or are not allowed, by allowing marriages between siblings and giving it priority What the Valyrians did was centralize their resources and keep the dragon lord families united and separate.

Of the three Valyrian families that survived, only one were dragon lords and although we have records of cross-marriages with the Velaryons, I am sure that Rhaenys is the only case in which the Targaryens gave a bride instead of receiving one and the Celtigar did not even have lands until the conquest.

The social structures already present meant that the Targaryens were the only ones with the sociocultural privilege of having access to dragons even though they all share the same blood and that the existence of Addam demonstrates that the Velaryons can ride dragons as well as any Targaryen descendant. But the point in the end remains that you need to have the blood of dragon lords in order to even hope to have a dragon, it is the blood that allows the ability to join them.

Oh, but not everyone can!! Yes, well, neither could all the FM or everyone on the other side of the wall could do it!

It's not rocket science, they even seem to understand it when it comes to FM, but are incapable of understanding when it comes to the Targaryens. because? Because the Targaryens have dragons and they're cool. When they release the right to have dragons as if any average Joe can have them, what they want is to open the power fantasy to project that if they were there they could have it without getting dirty with the less tolerable parts of the Targaryen legacy, the legacy that Dany fights to maintain and change to something that suits her.

Nettles is then used to signal not a no like the other Valyrians, because they are stealing her possible heritage and lineage.The only one who lacks the typical Valyrian appearance of the other seeds, her lineage is taken from her and she is also a descendant of dragon lords because "her story is more interesting that way."It doesn't matter that it breaks with the world-building already presented and that they actually prefer it because it is a screw to the Targaryens and a way of projecting themselves

Nettles' story is already different: she is a woman among a group of men, that in itself puts her in a different social and privileged perspective. The erasure of her Valyrian heritage also diminishes her both within and outside of the story. There is an inside and an outside and she is being marginalized even within the group.And there is also a racial element: why is the black girl the only one who can't have magical blood? Why doesn't she deserve that trip, that trope? The normal girl who is actually special

Oh, she has to earn it! Why? The others didn't.

Well your approach to sheepthief is different! That means she is different and not Valyrian! Good in the first, bad in the second. It means that she is careful, thoughtful and cunning, shows the strength of her character and is only emphasized in the way that she and Addam were loyal to the end.

If they really cared about Nettles her character would be analyzed for all of her wonderful traits rather than being reduced to the fantasy of can she anyone can and defenders From that theory wouldn't get so defensive because they don't want the bad Targaryens to be the only ones with cool dragons🥺🥺

This all makes sense to me, anon, and I totally agree! Warning, I'm probably going to take many of these points for later discussions, they're very good. You've gone into great detail into what I thought about the access to dragons vs class when we talk abt "possession" of dragons and the purpose of marriage in ancient/feudal socieities.

Favorites:

I don't know how to deny that in AsoIaF magic has a close relationship with blood and, as much as it bothers people, with lineage. Valyrians have dragons. The blood of the first men can change skin, control and see through the eyes of other animals.

...................................

Both have some kind of seers, both achieved that power in the first instance by dealing with blood magic and making pacts with naturally magical creatures (Correct me if I'm wrong but it's implied that FM didn't have magic before dealing with the children of the forest and adopting their gods).

...................................

On the contrary, when talking about the Targaryens, people seem... Wanting to release the ability and give it to the people? Oh, but the Targaryens wanted to keep the dragons for themselves! It's what they say and they're not wrong, but the way they write it sounds like the Targaryens=The Man™, The oppressor, the system that must be eradicated because it is the root of all evil and... No.

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The social structures already present meant that the Targaryens were the only ones with the sociocultural privilege of having access to dragons even though they all share the same blood and that the existence of Addam demonstrates that the Velaryons can ride dragons as well as any Targaryen descendant. But the point in the end remains that you need to have the blood of dragon lords in order to even hope to have a dragon, it is the blood that allows the ability to join them. Oh, but not everyone can!! Yes, well, neither could all the FM or everyone on the other side of the wall could do it! It's not rocket science, they even seem to understand it when it comes to FM, but are incapable of understanding when it comes to the Targaryens. because? Because the Targaryens have dragons and they're cool. When they release the right to have dragons as if any average Joe can have them, what they want is to open the power fantasy to project that if they were there they could have it without getting dirty with the less tolerable parts of the Targaryen legacy, the legacy that Dany fights to maintain and change to something that suits her.

...................................

[...] her [Nettles] lineage is taken from her and she is also a descendant of dragon lords because "her story is more interesting that way."It doesn't matter that it breaks with the world-building already presented and that they actually prefer it because it is a screw to the Targaryens and a way of projecting themselves

...................................

Nettles' story is already different: she is a woman among a group of men, that in itself puts her in a different social and privileged perspective. The erasure of her Valyrian heritage also diminishes her both within and outside of the story. There is an inside and an outside and she is being marginalized even within the group.And there is also a racial element: why is the black girl the only one who can't have magical blood? Why doesn't she deserve that trip, that trope? The normal girl who is actually special Oh, she has to earn it! Why? The others didn't.

It's in almost similar to people being all crazy about ASoIaF dragons not being "real" bc they have two instead of four free limbs. You're relying on originally arbitrary rules, but in this case there are real consequences to how you are going about defining how person is capable or not capable of a particular coveted ability....based on appearance. So what Valyrians did not begin to look pale? Have people not seen how grandchildren (even just children) of interracial couplings can look all sorts of ways? Skin color is not a perfect indicator of one's genetic background, though race's design definitely tries its best to make it so. And here we are with people kinds doing that!

And you made a great pt that never occurred to me abt hoe Nettles--the Black girl--has to be both removed from the at lore rule of binding with a dragon partially by her lineage/blood AND unlike the others having to "work or "earn" the ability to w/Sheepstealer. DO they not, once again, default back to what they accuse the Targ blacks and Rhaenrya of? Cosign Nettles to having to "earn" a better life bc she happens--to them--be of a particular social identity?

[essayofthoughts]

In contrast, how about Tiberius’s view on leading and royalty? He seems to highly value status and titles, in a weirdly similar way to Percy. But conversely, Tiberius seems to take his status as implicit power to do things (such as when he wrote his father asking for an army) and seems unaware of the prejudices he seems to hold, which we see often and Matt revealed the extent of later with the power structure in Draconia when VM were searching for Vorugal. How do his views and prejudice impact his relationship and dynamic in the group in your mind?

(Part 2)

The thing is I don't think Tiberius is aware of his prejudice at all. He has a WIS stat of four, people. He knows things, but he doesn't really... put them together very well - or at all, sometimes. I do think he's genuinely ignorant of his prejudices, such as with regards to Ravenites, and simply considers them... normal.

And... it's also not unlikely, given how stratified the pre-Vorugal Draconian society was (ha, Draconian) that... he was taught that it was all for sensical reasons in much the same way that racism and chattel slavery were justified throughout Europe and America.

Ravenites lack tails and so they are farther from Bahamut; it is the duty of true dragonborn to guide them towards Bahamut's teachings. Ravenites have a natural physical strength; they are suited to the ground and physical labour and not to the more academic learning open to true dragonborn. Ravenites are emotional and irrational; true dragonborn must show the enlightenment they've been gifted by Bahamut and not respond to their anger..

All of these have obvious counterpoints - are those tails removed or is it just a random mutation - and if a Ravenite was born with wings, would that change things? If a Ravenite gained wings - how would that upend this structure? Is that physical strength natural - or was it bred into them because the weaker ones weren't allowed to survive? Are Ravenites wrong to be angry at the perpetual injustice which shapes their lives? - but the point is, these are the kinds of ways racism and systemic injustice get justified to people and... I don't find it unlikely that Tiberius was indoctrinated in this from childhood. It likely never really occurred to him that it's strange or unjust or weird - as far as he's concerned, it's just how life is.

It's honestly one of the things that makes me a bit sad about Tiberius the character - he hunted artefacts and came from a messed up society. Can you imagine his joy at hunting the vestiges and the growth he could have gone through when VM encounter his Vorugal-struck homeland and see what his people have done to the Ravenites? You know that Vax wouldn't have stood for Tiberius being a racist shit, intentionally or not.

Whether Orion intended Tiberius to be unwittingly racist is unclear - certainly Tiberius responds to the tailless Tofor Brotorus in a way that indicates it's a planned part of his characterisation - and...

I've seen some people call that out as another reason he's Bad but my guys, having your character be flawed isn't a bad thing - it's a good thing, because it means they can grow and change. The problem is when one refuses to acknowledge those flaws as flaws, when one refuses to grow and change - which before his departure Orion seemed to be doing with both himself and Tiberius.

If we'd got to see more of Tiberius - if things had been better, perhaps - maybe we would have seen the group struggle with Tiberius' racism and seen Tiberius grow. As it is, Orion left before it could be more than a throwaway moment and Tiberius was killed before that growth could happen. We don't see Tiberius' racism have that much of an impact on his friendships or his dynamic with the group - but I would have loved to see it happen.

[lazaefair]

When we talk about the basics of body-based discourses in fandom, we’re talking generally about a few main things:

Black/brown characters written or drawn as significantly larger (height and muscle-wise) than their canon self and/or a white character or a light-skinned character of color

East Asian characters being written or drawn as smaller (sometimes more “feminine”) than Black/brown characters they may be paired with… as well as with white characters

How Black/brown characters are “gifted” with giant genitals. Primarily cis men, but in Omegaverse settings, Black/brown “alpha females” in some universes are similarly and dubiously “blessed”

[...]

Nothing we do exists in a vacuum. Not even want.

As Chong-Suk Han and Kyung-Hee Choi point out in “Very Few People Say “No Whites” Gay Men of Color and The Racial Politics of Desire”:

More importantly, imagining erotic worlds as independent social arenas rather than a part of a larger organized social system, leads one to believe that they are self-contained erotic marketplaces where those who possess valued traits are on equal footing, regardless of larger structural factors. Yet as Green (2011) also noted, sexual fields are not isolated arenas, but are embedded within a larger society whose values are reflected in what is considered desirable within a given sexual field. Likewise, Whittier and Simon (2001) argue, sexual desires are often influenced by larger social constructions of race, ethnicity, age and class. Given that sexual fields do not actually exist in a vacuum, these constructions of race, ethnicity, age and class are likely to transverse across different sexual fields.

In fandom and other “for fun” arenas, we’re told that there’s nothing serious about what we’re doing. We’re told that we’re just playing around and so writing a Black character as a big-dicked aggressor or drawing an East Asian character as a stereotype of erotic Orientalism is fine. Because it’s just fandom. It’s not serious. It doesn’t mean anything.

Except –

It does mean more than all of us tend to think.

People think of fandom, and what we create and consume in it, as fully separated from the rest of the real world.

Of course, what you’re into in fandom doesn’t have to mean it’s what you’re into in your real or offline life – and in most cases, fandom is fully a space for people to explore things they literally can’t engage with offline at any level and that’s not a bad thing at all. But we do bring our baggage into fandom with us and that means if we haven’t unlearned – or at least, started dealing with – baggage in the form of internalized bigotry we haven’t cast off… it’s coming right there with us to fandom.

Fandom should be a place where we just… do whatever. Where we’re sexy and can get off scot-free.

But as Han and Choi point out by referencing Green in their study: “sexual fields are not isolated arenas, but are embedded within a larger society whose values are reflected in what is considered desirable within a given sexual field.”

[...]

When we’re talking about creators messing up… here’s how that can look:

The main way that creators in fandom mess up, is in the way that we have lots of fanworks where a Black/brown character is somehow significantly larger than the non-Black person that is their partner in said fanworks… even when canon doesn’t match up.

[...]

In addition to this: Black/brown characters are often exclusively alphas in Omegaverse fiction (in and out of werewolf universes). They’re written as tops – the more service-y the better – who are rarely given emotional exploration the way other (often whiter) characters are. They don’t really get to have feelings… unless they’re about the non-Black POC or white character they’re about to plow like they’re a field in the Fertile Crescent.

[...]

Want to know how we can all do better?

Resources like Writing With Color do exist and while I’m reasonably sure most of their content is oriented around worksafe stuff, I’m sure they have advice for NSFW content! (They also have anon on so you can ask directly for help even if you’re feeling shy!)

Read romance writers by and about people of color. For example: if you’re going to write Black Panther fan fiction without writing anyone Black before… crack open Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series because that franchise’s influence on her own work is very obvious.

Read erotica by and about people of color. There are so many series worth recommending, but Solace Ames’s books stuck with me for years and she’s a great starting point for writing fully fleshed out characters of color who are queer and messy on main.

Go through the books at WOC In Romance because the best way to get used to writing characters of color is to read books about them in general.

Do your own research into things like fetishization – outside of how some people redefine it in fandom. Look up sexual racism and see how it’s portrayed in media and how it plays out in the dating world – so you can understand what to avoid in your own work. Check out The Erotic Life of Racism!

[kny111]

by Janine Francois

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore…” asks Langston Hughes in the haunting lines of his poem, “Harlem.” Written nearly 70 years ago, Hughes’ words remain just as relevant as ever.

“Harlem” is typically read as referring to Black aspirations—the crushing of dreams, and particularly, the promise of racial equality by American society at large. However, his words here may apply to literal Black dreams as well. A growing amount of research has found that Black Americans experience significantly less slow-wave sleep—the kind required for actual, rejuvenating rest—than white Americans. The lack of slow-wave sleep can cause serious mental and physical health issues, including premature death. This disparity, or “sleep gap,” has been the subject of numerous studies, some of which have found that Black Americans are five times more likely than white Americans to get less than six hours of sleep per night, are more likely than white Americans to feel sleepy during the day, and on average get an hour less sleep per night than white Americans.

There’s no scientific consensus on what, specifically, causes the sleep gap. As reported by The Atlantic in 2015, however, leading theories point to both experiences of discrimination and structural inequality—aspects of one’s environment that make one feel unsafe and insecure—as root causes. As Benjamin Reiss pointed out in the LA Times in 2017, Black Americans have lacked access to sufficient sleeping environments since slavery: “Aboard the ships of the transatlantic slave trade, African captives were made to sleep en masse in the hold, often while chained together. Once in the New World, enslaved people were usually still made to sleep in tight quarters, sometimes on the bare floor, and they struggled to snatch any sleep at all while chained together in the coffle. Slaveholders systematically disallowed privacy as they attempted round-the-clock surveillance, and enslaved women were especially susceptible at night to sexual assault from white men.”

Just as sleep deprivation was used as a means to control slaves, the modern-day sleep gap continues to weigh down many Black people, like me, today. I can feel it in me: It breaks my spirit, as I exist in between half-conscious states; never fully awake or asleep, never able to distinguish between the two. This may be the true power of racism—its force encompasses everything, seeping into our dreams at night and deflating our capacity to envision a better future. How can the radical Black imagination rebel against a system that so thoroughly seeks to destroy us? What would a future look like where we are liberated, reparations are paid, and we can finally rest?

Last year_,_ I attended an exhibition called Black Power Naps that begins to answer those questions_._ After debuting at Matadero Madrid Contemporary Art Center in Spain, where I saw it, the exhibition has since travelled to Performance Space New York, where it is on view through January, 2019. The ongoing project by Black Latinx artists Fannie Sosa (referred to as Sosa) and niv Acosta presents a series of interactive installations that invite Black visitors to lie, nap, relax, and play, providing “deliberate energetic repair,” as the artists put it, on the dime of white cultural institutions.

I and many other Black people are constantly aware of our Blackness in hyper-white environments, including art institutions. Elijah Anderson, a prominent ethnographer and Yale lecturer, describes us as “black interlopers” in his 2015 essay, “The White Space”: “When present in the white space, blacks reflexively note the proportion of whites to blacks...and... may adjust their comfort level accordingly; when judging a setting as too white, they can feel uneasy and consider it to be informally ‘off limits.’” As W. E. B. Du Bois suggests, we experience double consciousness, where we simultaneously become aware of both our Blackness, and the responses to it, in white spaces. The surveillance our bodies experience in art institutions—from being followed around in their gift shops to being watched by the gaze of their gallery attendants, and all amidst an undiverse collection of artworks and workforce—informs our feelings of exclusion. But perhaps Black Power Naps does something different: It is designed with Black people in mind, inverting a white art institution into a “Black space,” where the Black body is the center around which all the show’s installations conceptually orbit.

To enter Black Power Naps, you must take off your shoes. Removing one’s shoes is an act associated with sacred places—a symbolic gesture of leaving the world’s toxicity behind. Once inside the room, you see six “healing stations” before you, each “invented,” as the artists put it, to evoke different bodily sensations through physical contact. Each is adorned with silks, satins, and chiffons in delicate pastel hues to create a cozy cocoon of a room. The stations include the “Black Bean Bed,” a pool filled with uncooked black beans, designed to soothe someone experiencing a panic attack. If you lie in the pool, the beans swallow your body while cooling the skin, enveloping you in comfort. The “Air Swing,” meanwhile, is a swing surrounded by three silent fans intended to increase the amount of oxygen you breathe in and, effectively, improve sleep. And the “Atlantic Reconciliation Station” is a water bed intended to help descendants of enslaved people forcibly brought through the middle passage—or pushed off ships along the way—reconcile with the ocean by reminding them that, as the artists explain, the ocean is an “adoring entity that has always had our back.” Continue reading..

[the-blue-fairie]

On what #bringelsahome COULD BE vs. what it has become...

Sometimes, I become sad because one of the first things I wrote after viewing Frozen 2 was a short ficlet repudiating Elsa’s line in Show Yourself as she was approaching Ahtohallan that “I’m arriving / and it feels like I am home.” You can read that ficlet here if you want to.

In that ficlet, I was expressing frustration with the fact that Show Yourself was connecting the concept of “home” with Ahtohallan and connections found through memory and the past instead of the living, breathing connections that can be found in life. In that ficlet, I was also disputing the film’s concept of change because, as I wrote, “Home is not a lineage, a source, a gift. Gifts are given. Home, you make for yourself. Each step, a step forward. Not into the cold ancestral wonder of Ahtohallan, but into the warmth of the future. Holding tight to those she loved was not the absence of change. It was change itself, each day carving out a new shape, a new bejeweled crystal more fabulous than any on the glacier.” And I ended that ficlet repudiating Ahtohallan and having Elsa turn back to the home she has made in Arendelle with Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven. It was a ficlet born deeply out of my love of this image:

Now, the scary thing for me now is that there are parallels between my sentiments then and the... what do I call it? aggressive stance?... to #bringelsahome, which is rather unpleasant for me because that aggressive stance has become an excuse for racism and toxicity which I absolutely do not want to be associated with.

 But I’ve been thinking about something that @themountainsays mused about, and that @hb-pickle​ added to, asking what the ultimate goal of #bringelsahome actually is - because if the most hostile people actually wanted to change people’s minds or reach the creators, all they’ve managed to do is burn bridges and undermine their own cause.

I mean, look at me, when it comes to them burning bridges. I have conflicting feelings about F2′s ending and I’ve offered critiques of it - but the loudest members of #bringelsahome won’t look at those critiques because I openly reject the racism and toxicity that they push forward. 

But at the same time, there’s also a part of me that... understands where the basic sentiment to “bringelsahome” comes from and that’s gotten me to thinking about what #bringelsahome could be vs. what it has become.

I have friends who remain devastated by the ending of Frozen 2, and most of these friends have largely left the Frozen fandom either because they simply want to move on to other pastures or, even though they dislike Frozen 2, they’d rather not have any association with BEH - which... can you blame them?

But the pain of these friends, a pain they do not express in a toxic way, speaks to what #bringelsahome could be if it wasn’t rotted to the core by this point by racist rhetoric and aggression.

That pain actually emerges from a deep connection to Elsa and a valuing of Elsa’s connections to other people. These friends I’ve spoken with often reference a deep anguish that Elsa’s journey in Frozen 2 is structured so that she sheds traveling companions across the whole adventure - leaving Kristoff behind, leaving Anna and Olaf behind, going it alone when there is strength in working together and shorts like Frozen Fever and OFA highlight how when this found family works together, it has a positive impact on Elsa.

They wanted to see Elsa trusting Anna’s judgment, not pushing Anna and Olaf away in the ice boat, not falling into the same mistakes she did in the past... and their pain was heightened by the fact that, when Elsa seemed to fall back into those same mistakes, the film never really circled back to that or addressed it again... even when the film went out of its way to point out that Anna and even Olaf was angry. 

And... yes, it’s valid to say that Olaf - the most innocent and childlike character - becoming angry feels like a turning point of some kind... which then goes nowhere and that the film does nothing with. That’s a valid criticism of something that feels disjointed and off about F2.

And... I’d even argue that it’s valid to say that Elsa feels off at times over the course of Frozen 2 - and I’d put that down to, well, Elsa being “too much” for Disney. She means too many things for too many people. Her basic metaphor resonated with countless people - more than Disney ever imagined - and now they have to preserve that popularity, but the writers are trapped within the incredibly restrictive Disney system. They can’t make Elsa openly gay because the Mouse loves making money and making money means appealing to the broadest crowd, including the homophobes. And they want to keep Elsa broadly relatable so they try to lean into he concept of “magic” as an aspect of Elsa’s difference and also “explaining” that magic because certain people wanted an “explanation” for Elsa. 

But the problem with that vague (and therefore, in the film’s hope, broadly relatable) magic metaphor is that it’s vague and, unlike the previous movie, not really tethered to Elsa’s connections with people. The first movie, while it still used the metaphor of “magic as difference” grounded that metaphor in Elsa’s interactions with her sister, with the people of Arendelle, with how other human beings interact with her and the deeply human aspect of Elsa’s love for those other human beings. Frozen 2, in contrast, could have that... but it doesn’t.

I’ve argued several times over that Elsa’s arc in F2 would be stronger if the filmmakers had deeply enriched Elsa’s connection with the Northuldra, gave us more scenes of her bonding with her mother’s people, more scenes that expanded the Northuldra characters’ development. Maybe even start the film out with the deleted prologue focused on Iduna so we get the Northuldra’s perspective right fom the start and we can connect Iduna’s pain with Elsa’s own feeling of otherness.

Frozen 2... only gives a few brief scenes of Elsa with the Northuldra and has her shed members of her found family across the film... so F2 loses a human element that he first film never lost sight of. The “magic-as-difference” metaphor has to work more as metaphor, without the same human emotional grounding as the first film.

And because we don’t get those scenes with Elsa and the Northuldra and the film chooses to have Elsa leave behind members of her found family, I can understand why people would feel Elsa feels off in F2.

Because the film seems to care more about Elsa’s connection to magic than her humanity. That’s why there are several incidences of Elsa bonding with the spirits - and far less of her bonding with Northuldra characters.

This actually speaks to a legitimate, valid critique of the film - and people could use it to point out flaws in the film. Moreover, a critique like this could even be antiracist because it would be advocating for the expansion of the role of the Northuldra and more scenes of Elsa bonding with and learning about her mother’s people.

Critique actually has an important place within fandom - and critique can actually benefit the filmmakers if it is valid and valuable critique. Asking, “Why does F2 seem to care more about Elsa’s magic than her humanity and how does that undermine her arc?” is actually a valuable question. If the filmmakers reflected on it, then in a potential Frozen 3, they could make sure to reject the negative implications of distancing Elsa’s humanity. They could pause to think, “Oh, we didn’t INTEND to suggest this, maybe, but our second film did kind of give those implications, so let’s avoid those implications next time.” By EXPANDING the Northuldra characters. By reinforcing Elsa legitimately working together with her found family instead of feeling she has to go on alone.

That’s what bringelsahome could be - a movement to point out flaws in the film and a better way forward for the betterment of future projects.

Unfortunately, that’s not what it is - since the racism of certain people at its forefront has corroded it from the inside.

But I still find that tragic, because... it could have actually been something valuable. And there are aspects to it that still could be something valuable. And I still know many people out there with legitimate critiques who can’t voice their feelings about F2 because they disagree with Isa’s racism, so it doesn’t matter to Isa if they dislike F2; in her eyes, you’re either with her or against her...

[bookandcover]

What I miss most: “the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue.” ~June 8, 2021

I’m so glad to have finally read this book after it was repeatedly recommended to me by several different friends. Hanif Abdurraqib has an absolute gift for crafting essays that braid his personal experiences with the (sometimes seemingly cosmic, and therefore daunting to explain or conceptualize) forces of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and nationalism in America. He also jumps seamlessly in scale and in scope, summarizing the heart of something hugely complex—a masterpiece album, a regional sound, a decades-long relationship—without reducing the irreducibly complex, without sacrificing specificity, without sounding trite. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like this, although I haven’t read very much Creative Non-Fiction. Regardless, Hanif moves skillfully, masterfully. I love the collection’s confidence in narration, the love of language, the direct confrontation with that which makes us all deeply flawed (deeply human).

Each of these essays could stand alone. It’s a joy to read even one and Abdurraqib’s style shines through in just a couple pages. He crafts his stories with such dexterity. It’s clear that he comes from a background in poetry, as he celebrates language, builds vivid images, and thinks thematically. (I love the moments that are truly experimental—erasures of his own work, pieces without punctuation that flow on and on in one interlinked sequence). At the same time, he relies heavily on facts and content. Part of his conviction is born of research and depth of understanding. He knows his subject; yet, within this knowledge, he expresses personal preferences and sentimental love. I learned a ton from this book about music, about the history of particular musicians, about the relationship between racial inequality and self-expression within the field of music. Together, these essays form of complex tapestry of recent history in America seen through the lens of music. I absolutely loved the experience of coming to understand the interweaving of so many of our lives’ central questions and tensions through the history of music.

Art is inherently political, as many contemporary artists would agree (a viewpoint that counters the modernists before them who argued for the apolitical nature of art—art for art’s sake). Abdurraqib makes a very compelling argument for the deep integration of art with politics, social systems, economics, and trends. These things, however, are also deeply tied to the powerful forces of our choices, our identities, our love, and our compassion. It does not cheapen art of have it be so informed by, so shaped by political and social forces. In Abdurraqib’s worldview, art is the medium by which we reflect ourselves back to ourselves. And it’s also the medium by which we find freedom, by which we challenge ourselves to grow beyond the ways we understand ourselves to be. Race is the most central political and social theme that weaves throughout these essays, starting with the title of the book, which is introduced in the essay on Bruce Springsteen. “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” are the words that hang above Michael Brown’s memorial in Ferguson, Missouri. It might be hard to imagine an essay that weaves a Springsteen concert with a trip to Michael Brown’s resting place, a task that would certainly be daunting to any other writer, yet Abdurraqib navigates this with dexterity that seems natural, fundamental to how he thinks about the world.

Within the framework of race in America, some of the themes from these essays that I most appreciated and internalized included: Black joy (when it’s expressed and what it means), the markings of wealth (in the context of a journey out of poverty), and the policing of authenticity (or other forms of self-expression/emotion). Black joy is mentioned repeatedly in these essays, as something to be commented on for its rareness, while also positing the idea that music is a space that more boldly permits Black joy. Awareness of joy seems flow underneath these essays; it’s something not taken for granted, something treasured. I found this awareness of joy in the essay on Nina Simone’s Blackness and in the contrast between how she is portrayal by Hollywood and how she lives on in Abdurraqib’s childhood memories. I found this awareness of joy in the essay “Surviving Punk Rock Long Enough to Find Afropunk,” which focused on the exclusion of Black bodies from punk rock spaces (and the disregard for the handful of Black bodies that dared to enter anyway), while emphasizing the inherent survival in the African American experience that resonants deeply with punk rock’s values. A longing for a space that is joyful for Black people was addressed beautifully in the essay on Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, in which Abdurraqib wishes for a home in the darkness of the photo of the two of them, where he sees “a small & black eternity.”

One of my favorite essays in the collection was the piece “Burning That Which Will Not Save You: Wipe Me Down and the Ballad of Baton Rouge,” which focuses on the rise of three Baton Rouge rappers—Foxx, Lil Boosie, and Webbie—in the years that followed Hurricane Katrina, which changed the outlook of Baton Rouge and its relationship to loud neighbor New Orleans. The essay breaks down the fundamental pieces of the rapper persona (circa mid-to-late 2000s): shoulders, chest, pants, shoes. For each of these elements, the essential nature of each is discussed, particularly as they relate to signaling both wealth and self-confidence: the dream realized. I loved this essay because it brilliantly articulated something I’ve always sensed (understood in myself in certain ways), but been unable to well-articulate, which is the power of “markings of wealth” in the life of someone who has survived through poverty, or an understanding of the proximity of poverty. For this person, the possession of wealth (things that show wealth, that communicate its presence to others, whether or not there is a real depth of wealth) feels and is different. Someone wears their wealth differently if they are conscious of it. This is a different look than that of the third-generation millionaire’s son for whom a real depth of security is so deeply ingrained as to limit the frame of imagination to always include it. I loved how this essay explained that wealth is not an universally proud/cocky look, but instead braggadocios, something that has a lot of context, a lot of nuance, a lot to do with environment and habit and understanding of temporary/permanent.

Sports, another space in which the economic and political forces of America come head-to-head with the personal and lived experiences of diverse Americans, also center several of these essays. Abdurraqib has a similar appreciation of sports—spaces of fandom, spaces of mass-appeal, spaces where the struggles and triumphs of a few become the struggles and triumphs of many—as he has of music. The social discussion around sports also holds a magnifying class to systemic racism, a process which Abdurraqib unpacks and examines. Serena Williams is discussed as an example of the policing of Black self-expression (policing how she expresses anger, how she expresses confidence, i.e. “too loudly” for the white Western world), topics also addressed in depth in “On Kindness.” “Black Life On Film” tackles the way violence is romanticized and compartmentalized as part of the Black experience, allowing an observation of violence for white viewers that is unhinged from a need to alleviate it, to address it. These same tensions and problems bubble forth in the dialogue around sports, as the eyes of the nation are turned to popular topics, which are filtered through (nearly exclusively, exhaustively) the same biased lenses.

As Abdurraqib develops these complex themes, he relies on a few central tools that are essential to his literary project. To point out these common tools is not to say that Abdurraqib only has a couple tricks up his sleeve. These aren’t “tricks” at all. Instead, these seem important to how he thinks about the world, things that are inseparable from his mode of observation.

His most central tool is the “parallel events” essay structure. With this approach, Abdurraqib details what happened for him personally as events occurred elsewhere that rocked the framework and landscape of America. A collapse of time collapses distance. Abdurraqib seems to have experienced many of these such moments of collapse, as he vividly recalls where he was and what he was doing as particular significant events unfolded. The eeriness of these experiences are not lost on a reader; we’ve all been there. To say that Abdurraqib has experienced many of these is to, perhaps, point out how much current events impact and rock him (as they always do those who belong to the groups that are, time and time again, targeted and destroyed in America). But it’s also, perhaps, to point out the precision of Abdurraqib’s memory. He holds onto details like a vice, capturing for us in painful and poignant specificity the situation in which he personally broke against the tragedy of the news (as the news breaks to us, we break against it, like waves). One of the delicate powers of Abdurraqib’s use of this essay structure is the way that his personal narrative is not cheapened, nor lessened when set up against the national event, the event we all remember. Instead, one is given the right urgency and the other given the right intimacy.

This technique for framing an essay (an experience, a life) begins in the essay “A Night in Bruce Springsteen’s America” in which a white older man at a Springsteen concert tells Abdurraqib he was at another Springsteen show on the evening Lennon was murdered. While this man wishes that “no one gets killed out there during the show this time,” there’s no world in which, for Abdurraqib, someone is not killed out there during this show. The cycle of loss that is stitched into Abdurraqib’s environment, his racial identity, is too great for him to ever hold that same hope. I think that this technique of parallel events (one personal and intimate, one tectonic and tragic) is best maximized in the short piece “August 9, 2014,” a poetic erasure of Abdurraqib’s own writing. In the main text, Abdurraqib recounts something that seems, on the surface, like an every day experience: another passenger complaining on the flight he’s boarding, a mother asking to switch seats so her son can look out the window. With the bulk of the text crossed out, the secondary narrative that emerges from the remaining words is of another mother asking for her son. The date in the title clarifies that this secondary mother-son narrative centers on the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The longing, the seeking, the asking of both mothers exists in a poignant overly. Perhaps what the mother on the plane asks for is trivial, all things considered, but Abdurraqib never dismisses her impulse to shelter her son, from fear, but, at the same time, to let him see the world beyond the plane’s window. The personal and small that occurs in Abdurraqib’s unique experience takes on the sacredness, the elevation of the cosmic, the tectonic plate shifts of death/life, and also the heralding in of a new/old era in America with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

My favorite, though, of all these essays was “Fall Out Boy Forever,” one of the most personal in the collection. Abdurraqib places the loss of his closest friend to suicide into the context of the rise, fall, and rebirth (as if from the ashes) of the band they both loved. Abdurraqib’s long-term fan following of Fall Out Boy works like pearls on a string, moments in time that span years, yet unite into a collective personal narrative. This narrative rang so, so true to me, as someone for whom the bulk of the past six years has been shaped by my relationship to a specific band. Their narrative contains my narrative; my narrative contains their narrative. Their concerts, their albums, their successes, their growth—these things exist like glowing points on the thread of my experience. I recall my life within this thread, anchored by it. I know the previous time I was able to see my grandparents, down to the exact date three years ago, because it followed on the heels of a particular BTS album that played in my ears over and over that week. I know when and where I traveled within the timeline of their music. I know when my friendships blossomed, pinned to the backdrop that is their musical evolution. I know the ways they challenged and changed me, changed my writing, grew my sense of myself. I know how inseparable I am from BTS, and I saw this so poignantly reflected in Abdurraqib’s journey with Fall Out Boy.

Like any true fan (the fan who is not self-interested, the fan who is there for the ups and downs, the fan who is there for the real story), Abdurraqib observes the members of Fall Out Boy with such astuteness (this made me go and listen to more Fall Out Boy songs than I ever had before). I loved the way he captures the dynamic between the band members. He’s great at this in general (his insights into the intra-band relationships in Fleetwood Mac and the production of the album Rumors was also so engaging), but there’s a different intimacy, a different kind of care with Fall Out Boy. Abdurraqib’s ability to so clearly reveal his own close relationship with Tyler in the context of Fall Out Boy’s inner life is striking and heart-breaking—from Patrick’s frantic internalization of his music (performed for himself, yet in front of a crowd) without Pete’s complimentary/conflicting (necessary) presence when Abdurraqib seems him perform solo in Austin, to Tyler’s DESTROY WHAT DESTROYS YOU patch that Abdurraqib casts into the pit at a concert after wearing it to shows for years. To me, Tyler leapt from these pages, alive in the space where Fall Out Boy and their audience come together, transcending his own life’s timeframe in the liminal, magical space that is the live concert venue. This essay made me feel less alone in my experience of life perceived through the lens of music. This essay was Abdurraqib’s project at its most intimate, where the perception that happens through the lens of music is, most fundamentally, that of one’s self.

[alchemabotana]

Shamanic Identity

Today I’m taking the time to write this post about something so personal and dear to my heart: Shamanic Identity.

You’ve probably seen it too: people with no right to the word Shaman using it liberally to describe the work they do. I’ve written several other posts about shamanism, its history, and my personal practice here on this blog, but that’s not exactly what I’m writing about today.

The word “appropriation” doesn’t begin to cover this topic, although it is a word that applies to the concepts I’m addressing. The concept of Shamanic Identity is actually not a complicated one at all: a Shaman is an intermediary between the Spirit World and the Physical World, between the multiverse and dimensional realities that are unseen and the seen world. These people do so by simply existing and taking up space. There are Shamanic Practices, Shamanic Techniques, Shamanic Ceremonies, and Shamanic Rituals, but that’s NOT Shamanic Identity. These things are simply words and labels we’ve developed as Shamans to describe categories of actions that we take in the world, not our Identity.

For example, if I stopped offering healings, making medicine pieces or altars, performing rituals or ceremonies... I would still be a Shaman, because that’s who I was born to be. I know Shamans who drive trucks for a living, are maids, trash collectors, incarcerated, or in a mental hospital: but they’re still Shamans. They don’t need to take a special class, tell you their genetic lineage, or practice a specific modality to be a Shaman.

So what has created the Shamanic Identity crisis that is so widespread in this current age? What it boils down to is The Cultural Iceburg. 

The Cultural Iceburg is the concept that what we see when interacting with an individual is not all there is. When people think of Shamanism they associate it with our Customs, Language, and Music. But they mistakenly ignore Values, Priorities, Assumptions, Body Language, Stories, Manners, and Space/Time Concepts of our LIVED EXPERIENCE.

This is why it’s so easy for someone to put on the headdress, get a rattle or drum, and start claiming that they are a Shaman. Why do these people do this? Primarily to gain a position in some social group or setting they’d like to belong to (usually not the cultural group they are appropriating from, but others in their racial/social/socioeconomic/class structure). These individuals are also highly motivated by FINANCIAL GAIN.

I want to take some time to talk about financial gain and Shamanism. I’ll be frank, I don’t know any rich Shamans. I don’t know any Shamans who feel completely comfortable charging a fair price for their services, and I know a lot of Shamans who have gone hungry and homeless because they don’t feel right about charging money. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay a Shaman the fair price for their work (services or goods). Just as you would pay someone a fair living wage for hours worked, you ought to pay a Shaman for their work. It’s that simple.

But there are many clear examples, unfortunately many of them in my hometown community, of people taking Shaman Schools or Shaman Certifications or Shaman Classes (usually online - not that there aren’t authentic shamanic online courses) in order to claim that they are a Shaman or to show “proof” that they are “qualified” to be a Shaman. I ran into this when a local hospital approached me about coming on board as a Shaman in their clergy. It became very obvious that their department had no real clue what a Shaman does, as they asked for proof of my schooling and accreditation as a Shaman. When I told them I wouldn’t provide those materials because it is not culturally appropriate, they asked me for the names and qualifications of my teachers. My teachers also did not have the qualifications they were looking for, and I REFUSE to play the “show me your identification card” game which is insulting to our elders. 

Are you starting to get the picture?

Shamanism is a complex identity structure. It requires a person to have certain prerequisite gifts. That’s not something you can give a person or teach a person in a course or school. Some will argue that you can transfer gifts, but I will argue that you have to be a Shaman already to receive them. In my experience as a Shaman it has often been necessary to teach other Shamans how to manage their gifts so that they would not be overwhelmed by them. Shamans have to deal with a complex cultural stigma against their very identities: don’t talk to dead people, don’t listen to voices, don’t communicate with spirits, don’t you dare see one or you’ll be labeled insane. If you’re a Shaman of BIPOC origin, just go ahead and layer institutional racism on top of it, and you’re in for a flurry of misunderstanding and bigoted response to your very identity out there in the “real world.” Shamans have to learn to navigate incredible barriers to basic human rights when they take the steps to seek help for mental or physical health issues. Some of those issues have nothing to do with them, except that their care providers are too ignorant on complex cultural matters to be good advocates for their care. This is why the great majority of Shamans that I have taught, studied with, or been in the care of, have tragic stories of healthcare gone wrong & wrongful incarceration/mental institutionalism. I really don’t know a single Shaman who doesn’t struggle with a mental health diagnosis, complex PTSD, or Epigenetic Trauma.

For those of us born of family lineages, we have to navigate Epigenetic Trauma as well. We have to face a healthcare system that was built on experimentation on our ancestors, and overcome major trust issues to receive treatment for conditions that most average citizens of the US suffer from as well: anxiety, depression, PTSD, domestic violence, sexual violence, etc. Except, when a Shaman goes to receive help they have to explain why they see spirits and their whole cosmology before someone takes them seriously around conditions that have nothing to do with their Shamanic Identity. Sometimes Shamans feel they HAVE to be honest about their experiences with these providers, even if it hurts them. They have most likely been abused for their Shamanic Identity, and aren’t so much sharing their experiences to seek help for the woo-woo, but help navigating abuse.

But those without real Shamanic Identities just take off the label Shaman whenever it is convenient. They do not have to bear the burdens of Shamanic Identity, but receive the financial benefits of associating themselves with the term. These are the folks who come to me desperate to associate themselves with me as a student, so they can claim they have met the “requirements” to be a practicing Shaman for their business profile. It’s been incredibly hard for me to navigate this within myself and not respond immediately with rage. Instead, I try to educate people tactfully - some are more responsive than others. For example, I had a student once inquire about my Shamanic Mentorship - a mentorship program I offered pre-pandemic in which I explicitly stated the purpose was to receive mentorship from a Shaman. Nothing more. This particular individual had a yoga studio and wanted to “Add Shamanism” to what they offered. I tried to explain the impossibility of such a venture, especially with me as their token Shaman who would bestow this identity on them, so they could monetize my cultural and identity for their benefit. I never heard from the person again, although they do still own and operate a studio in my hometown, they have taken no actions to support our Shamanic work on any level. My hope is that they realized the futility and ignorance of their request, although I’m certain they had no intention of ever supporting us at all. 

You’ve probably seen this kind of “shamanism” online on instagram posts, influencer pages, and people who are what I call “shamanic curious”. All these individuals have done nothing to truly commit to alleviating the pains and sufferings that they’re causing by appropriating someone’s actual identity. They feel like they have the best intentions: “Omg! No!! ONLY LOVE AND LIGHT SIS!” (eye roll). However, they tend to be completely ignorant to the damage and stress they cause to real Shamans through their selfish actions. “Being curious is ok right? I mean, I have the right to explore my identity through yours and see if it gets me friends, likes, follows, and MONEY, RIGHT?” No. Go home. Think about what you are doing when you try on someone’s identity and put yourself out there as the face of that identity. Would it behoove you to consider that Shamans themselves have had to strenuously defend their identities to others? Would it perhaps be a real act of love and light to give up your curiosities and turn over that experience to an actual Shaman? Have you considered that you cause real physical, spiritual, and mental harm to Shamans, and clients that you take on in your exploration of Shamanic traditions, rituals, and ceremonies?

If you don’t truly have a Shamanic Identity I encourage you to stop what you’ve been practicing right now, sit down, and ask for forgiveness from the Spirits, as well as living Shamans and their Ancestors. I would go to a real Shaman and pay them properly to remove the slew of crazy toxic attachments you’ve definitely been accumulating, and release you from the karmic debt you are certainly incurring. If you can get a job doing anything in the real world sector that doesn’t involve you crawling up into someone’s energy stream, I would suggest you take that job and step out of a sector you know nothing about. It’s amazing to me what people think they can make-up about themselves and others because deep down they also believe that Shamanism is made up. If it’s all made up, then you can do anything you want with no repercussions and still make money off someone else’s identity. And you still think you’re not harming anyone? 

If you’re a Shaman you know that you can’t fake it til you make it. There’s no faking the Spirits, Guides, and Ancestors. There’s no faking a spiritual or psychic attack. There’s no faking the spirit’s communication to you, or their visible presence. And when you go out into the world, no matter what you do, people are going to find you for your Shamanic Identity.

For example, I once worked at a test grading facility one summer marking up EOG exams. While at this job at every break an elderly woman would come up to me and share her stories, always with the caveat “I don’t know why I’m telling you this but...” and then go into a story about how her deceased father was contacting her at her home. He would do so by knocking things off tables and moving things around. I asked her what he thought he was trying to tell her. She eventually concluded that he wanted her to move from her house, but she didn’t feel ready for that. I suggested that she tell him this next time he made his presence known. Next time we talked she shared that she had spoken with him and that the incidents then stopped. After that she didn’t come up to me to talk, and someone new started talking to me. My boss brought me photographs from her time in AZ as a young woman, depicting petroglyphs that matched my shamanic tattoos. She said “you know that means you’re a shaman right?” I laughed and nodded. At one point everyone in my grading group was feeling very ill, one of the proctor overlords had decided to crank up the AC and everyone was freezing cold. I brought everyone blankets and stones. One gentleman later asked me what the stone meant. I told him, “it’s a piece of quartz, it doesn’t have to mean anything, it can just be beautiful”. He said “No, I mean - they mean something. I know this sounds crazy, but some really bad stuff was going on with my family: financial and health problems. But when I brought that stone home, everything changed immediately. I need you to know that.” I acknowledge him and told him yes, this can happen - the stones heal who they want to, that’s just part of our understanding of them, but we don’t expect others to believe the same way. He said “I don’t need convincing, I experienced it myself”.

No one article can even begin to truly communicate the issues surrounding the theft, appropriation, and misrepresentation of Shamanism in our world, let alone the internet. I mean, the Q Anon guy called himself a Shaman too and the media just ate it up. Why? Because it is exotic and ignorance makes for good press, and good press makes for money. 

And I don’t write this to depress or discourage anyone, especially others out there with a Shamanic Identity. Instead, I hope that this encourages you and helps you advocate for yourself in this crazy world. I hope you stand up for yourself to people trying to take advantage of you, especially people in the medical field. I don’t believe that our medical field is based on true healing practices, and I can’t really get into that rant here, but I also don’t believe our doctors mean to be “bad people” or wallow in ignorance: they’re just products of their own cultural issues as well! 

However, if you’re a Shaman struggling to receive mental or physical healthcare because someone in your family or caregiver team is purposefully using your Shamanic Identity to paint you as crazy, please feel free to show them this article and demand that they use DSM-5 to evaluate you. You deserve nothing but the best treatment. You don’t need to feel ashamed for feelings of paranoia, terror, anxiety, depression, or PTSD. People who aren’t Shamans deal with it too, so don’t be afraid of those words. I don’t know many Shamans actually disturbed by their gifts. They aren’t actually suffering mentally from seeing or hearing spirits, but from the reactions of their family, friends, colleagues, and health professionals to their actual identities. These Shamans aren’t afraid of the Spirits or Ancestors, and have had to be put in the position where they rely on those spirits to provide the care and discernment of truth that should be provided by the health and wellness systems. It’s time for the gatekeepers of the medical industry to acknowledge their bias, their systemic failure of these individuals, and the exploitation of in-need Shamans. Once that has happened, real care can be provided for issues not caused by a Shamanic Identity inherently, but by external forces of society that come against a Shaman. 

This article is dedicated to the sweet Shaman who visited my shop today with only $2 to exchange for altar work. She shared her story in great detail of how the medical industry was abusing her in the ways I’ve outlined before. She was discouraged by it, seeking information to provide to herself and her care team so that she could get real care. I was happy to provide her with the shamanic goods she needed and gift it to her as a birthday present. I tried my best to give her free resources to access for her healthcare and talking points to share with her medical team. Sister, this is what I promised you on my blog, and I hope you enjoy it. Also, I wish you the Safe Passage you’re so willing to offer others, as well as the brightness of your spirit back to you. I hope that things resolve quickly and you get the respect you deserve, because I honor your Shamanic Identity, and I appreciate you honoring mine.

[bensk]

Be curious. Be humble. Be useful.

I was invited to give the annual Taub Lecture for graduating Public Policy students at the University of Chicago, my alma mater and the department from which I graduated. This is what I came up with.

---

I am incredibly grateful and honored to be here tonight. The Public Policy program literally changed my life.

My name is Ben Samuels-Kalow, my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m a 2012 Public Policy graduate, and I will permit myself one “back in my day” comment: When I was a student here, the “Taub Lecture” were actual lectures given by Professor Taub in our Implementation class. I’ve spent the last nine years teaching in the South Bronx. For the past two years, I have served as Head of School at Creo College Prep, a public charter school that opened in 2019.

I was asked tonight to tell you a bit about my journey, and the work that I do. My objection to doing this is that there is basically nothing less interesting than listening to a white man tell you how he got somewhere, so I'll keep it brief. I grew up in New York City and went to a public high school that turned out Justice Elena Kagan, Chris Hayes, Lin-Manuel Miranda, among many others…none of whom were available tonight.

We, on this Zoom, all have one thing in common — we have been very, very close to graduating from the University of Chicago. I have never sat quite where you sit. I didn’t graduate into a pandemic. But the truth is that everyone graduates into a crisis. The periods of relative ease, the so-called “ends of history”, even the end of this pandemic, are really matters of forced perspective. This crisis isn’t over. Periods of relative peace and stability paper over chasms of structural inequality.

You went to college with the people who will write the books and go on the talk shows and coin the phrases to describe our times. You could write that book. You could go into consulting and spend six weeks at a time helping a company figure out how to maximize profits from their Trademark Chasm Expanding Products.

You could also run into the chasm.

What is the chasm?

It is the distance between potential and opportunity. It is a University on the South Side of Chicago with a student body that is 10% Black and 15% Latinx, with a faculty that is 65% white.

It is eight Black students being admitted to a top high school in New York City...in a class of 749.

What is the chasm?

The chasm is that in our neighborhood in The Bronx, where I’m standing right now, 1 in 4 students can read a book on their grade level, and only 1 in 10 will ever sit in a college class.

It is maternal mortality and COVID survival rates. The chasm is generational wealth and payday loans.

It is systemic racism and misogyny.

It is the case for activism and reparations.

In my job, the chasm is the distance between the creativity, brilliance, and wit that my students possess, and the opportunities the schools in our neighborhood provide.

In the zip code in which I grew up in New York City, the median income is $122,169. In the zip code where I have spent every day working since I graduated from UChicago, the median income is $30,349. The school where I went to 7th grade and this school where next year we will have our first 7th grade are only a 15 minute drive apart.

In my first quarter at UChicago, I joined the Neighborhood Schools Program, and immediately fell in love with working in schools. I joined NSP because a friend told me how interesting she found the work. I’d done some tutoring in high school, and had taught karate since I was 15. I applied, was accepted, and worked at Hyde Park Academy on 62nd and Stony Island in a variety of capacities from 2008 to 2012.

At the time, Hyde Park Academy had one of very few International Baccalaureate programs on the South Side, and every spring, parents would line up out the door of the school to try to get their rising 9th grader in. I worked with an incredible mentor teacher and successive classes of high school seniors whose wit, creativity, and skill would've been at home in the seminars and dorm discussions we all have participated in three blocks north of their high school.

In my work at Hyde Park Academy, I learned the first lesson of three lessons that have shaped my career as a teacher. Be curious. I had been told in Orientation that there were “borders” to the UChicago experience, lines we should not cross. I am forever grateful to the people who told me to ignore that BS. Our entire department is a testimony to ignoring that BS. We ask questions like, why did parents line up for hours to get into what was considered a “failing” high school? Why had no one asked my kids to write poetry before? Why are they more creative and better at writing than most of the kids I went to high school with, but there is only one IB class and families have to literally compete to get in? I learned as much from my job three blocks south of the University as I did in my classes at the University...which is to say, I was learning a LOT, but I had a lot more to learn.

I knew I wanted to be a teacher from my first quarter here. I did my research. The Boston Teacher Residency was the top program in the country, so I applied there. I was a 21 year old white man interested in education, so...I applied to Teach for America. In the early 2010’s, I looked like the default avatar on a Teach for America profile. It was my backup option. I was all in on Boston, and was sure, with four years working in urban schools, a stint at the Urban Education Institute, and, at the time, seven years of karate teaching under my belt, I was a shoe in.

I was rejected from both programs. Which brings me to my second lesson. Be humble. We are destined for and entitled to nothing. There is an aphorism I learned from one of my favorite podcasts, Another Round: "carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man." If you are a mediocre white man, like me, do as much as you can not to be. If you look like me, you live life on the "lowest difficulty setting." This means I need to question my gifts, contextualize my successes, and actively work against systems of oppression that perpetuate inequity.

Over the last two years, I have interviewed over 300 people to work at this school. There are a series of questions that I ask folks with backgrounds like myself:

Have you ever lived in a neighborhood that was majority people of color?

Have you ever worked on a team that was majority people of color?

Have you ever worked for a boss/supervisor/leader who was a person of color?

The vast majority of white folks, myself at 21 included, could not answer “yes” to these three questions. This is disappointing, but I've also lived and worked in two of the most segregated cities on this continent, so it is not surprising. By the time I sat where you’re sitting now, I had learned a lot about education policy and sociology. I'd taken every class that Chad offered at the time. I'd worked at UEI, I'd worked in a South Side high school for four years, and I still thought I was entitled to something. Unlearning doesn't usually happen in a moment, and I certainly didn't realize it at the time, but these rejections were the best thing that has happened to me in my growth as a human.

I moved back home to New York, was accepted to my last-choice teaching program, and started teaching at MS 223: The Laboratory School of Finance & Technology. I ended up teaching there for 5 years. I had incredible mentors, met some of my best friends, started a Computer Science program that’s used as a model at hundreds of schools across New York City…and most importantly, while making copies for Summer School in July of 2015, I met my wife.

All this to say — if you aren’t 100% convinced that what you’re doing next year is Your Thing, keep an open mind…and make frequent stops in the copy room.

I learned that teaching was My Thing. I didn't want to do ed policy research. I got to set education policy, conduct case studies, key informant interviews, run statistical analysis…with 12 year olds. This was the thing I couldn’t stop talking about, reading about, learning about. I really and truly did not care about the “UChicago voices” of my parents and my friends who kept asking what I was going to do next. My answer: teach.

If you look like me, and you teach Computer Science, there are opportunities that come flying your way. I was offered jobs with more prestige, jobs with more pay, jobs far away from the South Bronx. I was offered jobs I would have loved. But I’d learned a third lesson: be useful. If you have a degree from this place, people will always ask you what the next promotion or job is. They will ask "what's next for you" and they will mean it with respect and admiration.

Here’s the thing: teaching was what’s next. “But don’t you want to work in policy?” Teaching is a political act. It is hands-on activism, it is community organizing, it is high-tech optimistic problem-solving and low-tech relationship building. It is the reason we have the privilege of choosing a career, and it is a career worth choosing.

I had internalized what I like to call the Dumbledore Principle: “I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power.” This meant unlearning the very UChicago idea that if you were smart and if you think and talk like we are trained to think and talk at this place, you should be in charge. The best things in my life have come from unlearning that. Learning from mentors to never speak the way I was praised for in a seminar. Learning from veteran teachers how to be a warm demander who was my authentic best self...and more importantly brought out the authentic best self in my students. Being useful isn't the same thing as being in charge…and that is ok.

I believe this deeply. Which is why, when I was offered the opportunity to design and open a school, my first thought was absolutely the hell no. I said to my wife: “I’m a teacher. Dumbledore Principle — we’re supposed to teach, make our classrooms safe and wonderful for our kids.”

I also knew that teaching kids to code wasn’t worth a damn if they couldn’t read and write with conviction, so I started looking for schools that did both — treated kids like brilliant creatives who should learn to create the future AND met them where they were with rigorous coursework that closed opportunity gaps. In our neighborhood, there were schools that did the latter, that got incredible results for kids. Then there was my school, where kids learned eight programming languages before they graduated, but at which only 40% of our kids could read.

We were lauded for this, by the way. 40% was twice the average in our district. We were praised for the Computer Science — the mayor of New York and the CEO of Microsoft visited and met with my students. It felt great. I wasn’t convinced it was useful.

Kids in the neighborhood where I grew up didn’t have to choose between a school that was interesting and a school that equipped them with the knowledge and skills to pursue their own interests in college and beyond. Why did our students have to choose? I delivered this stressed-out existential monologue to my wife that boiled down to this: every kid deserves a school where they were always safe, and never bored. We weren’t working at a school like that. I was being offered a chance to design one. But…Dumbledore principle.

My wife took it all in, looked at me, and said: “You idiot. Dumbledore RAN a school.”

Friends, you deserve a partner like this.

The road to opening Creo College Prep, and the last two years of leading our school as we opened, closed, opened online, finished our first year, moved buildings, opened online again, opened in-person (kind of) and now head into our third year, has reinforced my lessons from teaching — be curious, be humble, be useful. These lessons are about both learning and unlearning. A white guy doing Teach for America at 21 is a stereotype. A white guy starting a charter school is a stereotype with significant capital, wading into complicated political and pedagogical waters. The lessons I learn opening a school and the unlearning I must do to be worthy of the work are not destinations, they are journeys.

Be curious

I didn’t just open a school. Schools are communities, they are institutions, and they are bureaucracies. If you work very, very hard, and with the right people, they become engines that turn coffee and human potential into joy and intellectual thriving capable of altering the trajectory of a child’s life.

First you have to find the right people. I joined a school design fellowship, spent a year visiting 50 high-performing schools across the country, recruited a founding board of smart, committed people who hold me accountable, and spent time in my community learning from families what they wanted in a school. There is studying public policy, and then there is attending Community Board meetings and Community Education Council Meetings, and standing outside of the Parkchester Macy's handing out flyers and getting petition signatures at Christmastime next to the mall Santa.

I observed in schools while writing my BA, and as a teacher, but it was in this fellowship that I learned to “thin slice,” a term we borrowed from psychology that refers to observing a small interaction and finding patterns about the emotions and values of people. In a school, it means observing small but crucial moments — how does arrival work, how are students called on, how do they ask for help in a classroom, how do they enter and leave spaces, how do they move through the hallways, where and how do teachers get their work done — and gleaning what a school values, and how that translates into impact for kids. Here’s how I look at schools:

Does every adult have an unwavering belief that students can, must, and will learn at the highest level?

Do they have realistic and urgent plans for getting every kid there? Are these beliefs and plans clear and held by kids?

Are all teachers strategic, valorizing planning and intellectual nerdery over control or power?

Is the curriculum worthy of the kids?

Can kids explain why the school does things they way they do? Can staff? Can the leader?

If I'm in the middle of teaching and I need a pen or a marker, what do I do? Is that clear?

What’s the attendance rate? How do we follow up on kids who aren’t here?

How organized and thoughtful are the physical and digital spaces?

Are kids seen by their teachers? Are their names pronounced correctly? Do their teachers look like them? Do they make them laugh, think, and revise their answers?

Would I want to work here? Would I send my own kids here?

Be humble

I learned that there are really two distinct organizations that we call “school.” One is an accumulation of talent (student and staff) that happens to be in the same place at the same time, operating on largely the same schedule.

These were the schools I attended. These are schools you got to go to if you got lucky and you were born in a zip code with high income and high opportunity. These are schools where you had teachers who were intellectually curious, and classmates whose learning deficits could be papered over by social capital…and sometimes, straight up capital.

“Accumulation of talent” also describes the schools I worked at. These were schools where if you got lucky and you were extraordinary in your intelligence, determination, support network, and teachers who’d decided to believe in you, you became one of the stories we told. “She got into Cornell.” “That whole English class got into four year colleges.”

Most schools in this country, it turns out, are run like this. I knew all about local control and the limits of federal standards on education and the battles over teacher evaluations and so much other helpful and important context I learned in my PBPL classes.  But when thin-slicing a kindergarten classroom in Nashville on my first school visit of the Fellowship, I saw a whole other possibility of what “school” can be.

School can be a special place organized towards a single purpose. One team, one mission. Where the work kids do in one class directly connects to the next, and builds on the prior year. Where kids are treated like the important people they are and the important people they will be, where students and staff hold each other to a high bar, where there is rigor and joy. A place where staff train together so that instead of separate classrooms telling separate stories about how to achieve, there is one coherent language that gives kids the thing they crave and deserve above all else: consistency.

We get up every morning to build a school like that. It’s why my team starts staff training a month before the first day of school. It’s why we practice teaching our lessons so that we don’t waste a moment of our kids’ time. It’s why everyone at our school has a coach, including me, so we can be a better teacher tomorrow than we were today. It’s why we plan engaging, culturally responsive, relevant lessons. It’s how we keep a simple, crucial promise to every family: at this school, you will always be safe, and you will never be bored.

Be useful

Statistically speaking, it is not out of the realm of possibility that several of you will one day be in a position to make big sweeping policy changes. You will have the power to not only write position papers, but to Make Big Plans. I will be rooting for you, but I hope that you won’t pursue Big Plans for the sake of Big Plans.

The architect who designed the Midway reportedly said "make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." I had that quoted to me in several lectures at this school, and you know what?

It’s bullshit.

I am asking you not to care about scale. Good policy isn’t about scale, it’s about implementation, and implementation requires the right people on the ground. Implementation can scale. The right people cannot. We can Make Big Plans, but every 6th grade math class still needs an excellent math teacher. That's a job worth doing. I could dream about starting 20 schools, but every school needs a leader. That’s a job worth doing. Places like UChicago teach us to ask "what's next" for our own advancement, to do this now so we can get to that later. I learned to ask "what's next" to be as useful as possible to as many kids as I have in front of me.

I hold these two thoughts in my mind:

The educational realities of the South Bronx have a lot more to do with where highways were built in our neighborhood than with No Child Left Behind or charter schools, and require comprehensive policy change that address not only educational inequity, but environmental justice, and systemic racism.

The most useful policy changes I can make right now are to finalize the schedule for our staff work days that start on June 21, get feedback on next year’s calendar from families, and finish hiring the teachers our kids deserve.

I will follow the policy debates of #1 with great interest, but I know where I can be useful, and I’ll wake up tomorrow excited to make another draft of the calendar. I hope you get to work on making your Small Plans, and I will leave you with the secret — or at least the way that worked for me:

Find yourself people who are smarter than you and who disagree with you. Find problems you cannot shut up or stop thinking about. Do what you can’t shut up about with intellect and kindness. Use the privilege and opportunity that we have because we went to this school to make sure that opportunity for others does not require privilege. Run into the chasm.

Be curious, be humble, be useful.

Thank you.

[kkglinka]

I gotta say how much I love that this DC Limited Series is validating so many of my personal interpretations of existing canon. But of course, I'm talking about Blake — you know me.

I understand that many have difficulty with various inconsistencies in the art, but as someone who has read comics since age thirteen, I find them negligible Unless the company commissioning the series is wealthy, media tie-in comics are invariably slip-shod, with beginner artists and rushed art. Everyone's gotta start somewhere. I do accept the comics as canon and treat some scenes as the visual shorthand they are.

I really love many of the little details such as the Japanese aspects of her home life, along with the emphasis on Pacific Islander cultures, such as love of ocean sports — especially little Blake in a muumuu, draped with beaded necklaces. We also see she was a child in the city while Sienna is holding a rally with the Belladonna's both present and publicly acknowledged. Kali's dialog in a later issue tells us that Blake had fallen under Adam's influence when they still led the organization — so Blake was only eleven or twelve, at best. Clearly, younger Blake had periods where she was on the island. To me, that makes perfect sense, but to explain, I need to back up a little.

At odds with early fandom, I figured that Blake had to come from an upper class family and, if she were an orphan as her equivocation implied, then it was late enough in life that it left her with noticeably elegant manners. There was even a memorable instance in which Blake reflexively corrected Yang's slip in etiquette by thumping her across the stomach. (Just as Kali did to Ghira years later). From the way she holds a teacup to how mortified she was over Sun's behavior, we know manners matter to Blake. I was surprised as anyone else to discover her home still existed.

I was uncertain about her family home for a time until another viewer directed me to the post-episode storyboards. The house and lands are identified as "The Belladonna Estate" rather than, say, the chieftain's lodge. There is also a sepia toned photograph of what might be grandparents standing in front of what looks like the bungalow's portico. Finally we have V5's dialog about the Belladonna's time ending, which usually implies a family has been in power for generations.

The tragic princess story suggests that the island was already colonized by Faunus before Humans "gave" it to them. It's far more plausible, from a real life historical perspective, that Humans found the land inhospitable, full of dangerous wildlife and, most salient, resource poor. After the Faunus uprising, the people of the island welcomed refugees and those emigrating from Human controlled lands. The "gifting" was an underhanded way for Human's to cede authority and agree not to invade. So either the Belladonna's were native (unlikely since the capital name suggests a different culture), or they were Mistrali who married into a ruling family.

A chieftain system like we see in Kuo Kuana mostly closely resembles a constitutional monarchy. In smaller villages or tribes, the ruling body might be a council of elders. In a sprawling Rio de Janeiro city like Kuo Kuana, which stretches across the entire valley, it's likely a set of government department heads. The chieftain acts as a figurehead where compromise and mutual support are desired, but not necessary.

That person also forms alliances with other groups/governments and spearheads trade negotiations. In this system, the chieftain doesn't need to be present for the government to continue running smoothly. This system is completely compatible with the Chieftain of Kuo Kuana serving as High Leader and spearheading long-distance political rallies.

Blake refers to the early White Fang environment as being like a family, which kind of implies entire family groups were involved. But they were not a band of Roma or Sinti refugees continuously fleeing Nazi's and denied settlement everywhere they went (and still are). The way I see it, the WF were essentially a missionary group. Anywhere they went holding rallies, giving speeches, rocking the boat, they would have attracted converts and followers. They would have collected refugees, the elderly, the disabled, children, homeless, all wanting to flee and find new homes. Everyone needed to be fed, clothed, protected from Grimm etc.

There is no way that WF traveled through the winter — that would have been an unnecessary logistical nightmare, and suicidal for family groups. Instead, I imagine the Belladonna's gathered resources, planned travel destinations, organized funding, volunteers and everything else during the northern hemisphere's winter, while back home in Kuo Kuana. The band would then travel from spring to winter, which would be consistent with Blake's claim that she spent most of her life traveling with the WF. Then they would bring everyone back to Kuo Kuana in the fall, get new immigrants settled and so forth.

Let's go back to all those kids. First, the notion that semi nomadic groups don't educate their children in all aspects of life is an example of internalized racism with its roots in colonialist beliefs. All societies educate their children, but prior to the western colonial era, schools took a variety of forms. Some were permanent structures, some were tents, some were a circle of seats in an open clearing.

The materials might be written or oral, the teachers might be scholars, philosophers, priests or rabbi. In older models of education, you might think of it as elementary schooling followed by vocational training that inherently included relevant high school level topics. Regardless of method, the WF's children weren't a bunch of uncouth illiterate wild animals, though I'm sure Remnant's Humans believe exactly that.

Blake's vocational training would have been to a government position — more or less. That would have been history, politics and diplomacy, public speaking, combat abilities (for social appeal and to avoid being assassinated for power), self-restraint and etiquette. Much of that training would have begun when she was very little — some of it occurring subconsciously because little kids are like social sponges. But imagine truly comprehending that as you hit your early teens, that an entire island population will depend on you (even if only as a figurehead).

That is what brings us to the royalty in disguise trope. The most familiar example is Aragorn from LoTR. This trope always begins with the young royal attempting to abdicate from an overwhelming social responsibility, which haunts them whether they choose to go solo, follow another leader instead, or become a hermit. That guilt underpins their actions until they ultimately accept their role in society.

TL;DR; The White Fang did missionary work most of the year, helped new immigrants and planned for next year during the winter, and educated their children the same as any other society does. Blake spent about an aggregate third of her childhood at the family estate before Ghira became Chieftain full time, after which Blake traveled year round with Adam's splinter group. Her original very carefully worded equivocation was true and we're just having the six years of fanon problem.

[urghost-andurboo]

reflection on “objectivity,” oppression, and (lack of) social justice; from a white/queer/disabled social work student:

objective means “evidence-based,” but what academics mean when they say objective is:

“this is a fact, and you cannot challenge it without ___ (reading many badly-written sources, forming a written argument, getting funding for further research, doing said research, writing pages and pages, going through a perfectionist editing process, applying to be published and potentially being rejected multiple times, defending your work again and again)”

it is oppressive, i don’t have kinder words for it.

you can technically criticize any work and express your own point of view, but academics cannot, will not, and do not listen without the above work.

the people who science + academia makes decisions for are *not* the people who have access to academia.

black + brown people, people of color more broadly, immigrants, poor people, mentally ill / neurodivergent / disabled people, queer folks, the list goes on

these groups have less access to education and even less access to working *in* education and doing research, teaching, writing.

and these are also the groups most hurt by research and the idea of objectivity.

an objective world view, to an academic, is a broad overview of the world that encapsulates everyone’s experience. we can learn this truth, this objectivity, by studying it - through things we can physically see and touch and hear, interviews, surveys, recording measurements, making charts and graphs and using statistics. these pieces all fit together to form a puzzle, a complete view of the world that we know is correct because we saw it, we tested it, we studied it.

but this is false. objectivity, in this sense, does not exist. there is no way to hear everyone’s experience, see what people are thinking and feeling and doing, measure every part of the natural world, know everything there is to know about the human body. even if we could know these facts, the world is so vast that it would be so overwhelming that no one person or team could put it all together and understand it.

and, the idea that there is one truth, one way of thinking, one way of understanding the world is not only false, it is oppressive.

when people in power — scientists, academics, political figures, cops, medical doctors, educators — falsely believe that there is one truth, it opens the door for making decisions based on that truth.

these powerful figures falsely believe that they know what’s best for everyone because they “did the research!”

and that is not okay!

it is dehumanizing - literally disinviting many people from the conversation because they aren’t able to have a seat at the table

it doesn’t allow powerful figures to acknowledge mistakes - there is always a “reason” and a defense, a “let’s look into this and see what went wrong” mindset. decisions were based on fact not feeling, so there are no apologies, no immediate changes to help those who have been harmed.

and, the research does *not* take into account everyone’s point of view! “facts” as objective do not leave room for criticism, for responding to hurt, for predicting what kinds of hurt may result.

and, research will always lag behind the world.

the world is always moving and changing, things happen every day, and research cannot keep up with this. no matter how diligent they are, researchers are human, with limited time and resources and perspective. even with forward thinking and the best intentions, research takes an incredible amount of time and labor, and it’s hard! by the time a new problem is researched and published, so many people have already been hurting every day by this problem. it is not enough to research when people are living through pain and harm every day.

i don’t have a solution for this, i wish i did. i’ve been grappling with these ideas for years. i hoped that entering social work school, with my sensitivity and kindness and hopefulness, would add a helpful voice and solve some of the problems i’m seeing in the world.

but i don’t think that it does. i’m thinking about it compared to the police - the idea of all cops are bastards, there are no good cops, abuse and racism and violence are built into the system.

social work is not exactly the same, but i think a lot of it is similar. i am a social worker with so much self-knowledge and creativity and imagination, and i feel lost. i know that i have these good qualities, but i don’t think they are enough. i am not able to do a lot of the work, of reading and writing and speaking, because i am disabled. and if i cannot do the work, i can’t be a social worker. the system as it is now is not accessible to me. i want to help, i have gifts i know i can give, but i am going up against a huge, bureaucratic system with so many professional expectations that i cannot meet. just like all cops are bastards, if i were to be a working social worker, i would not be able to create change that is meaningful, long-lasting, broad, structural. my role would be so limited by time and finances and *what the agency i work at allows me to do.* the role of social work is ***incredibly*** limited. and, i think being in social work would also hurt me. i am sick and sad, and working every day face to face with others who are hurting so deeply, and not being able to help enough, is unimaginable. i feel so sad imagining it, i do not want that for myself.

and and and! social work exists within the exact same white supremacist, racist, oppressive culture that cops and politicians and capitalists do. social work is not anti-racist (at least not as a whole, not yet).

my experiences and thoughts are not valued in the social work world because i’m not able to communicate them in a way that academics understand and validate. at this point, i’m not able to change myself to fit. this means that... my voice doesn’t get heard. i’m not able to share my thoughts and ideas, my imagination and creativity. it doesn’t matter how creative and helpful my ideas are, if no one is listening.

i wish it were different. i am hoping one day it will be. but right now it is not, and though i don’t have a solution, i don’t think social work is the way forward.

general list of sources:

my lived experience with mental + physical illness, not being seen + heard by the institutions that have hurt me, or if i am heard, it taking months if not years to see changes

my experience being an autistic + adhd student: having a lot of thoughts and ideas, but lacking executive functions to write papers, and not being able to turn in other forms of creativity. also not being able to read many texts- they are often badly written so that i cannot understand them, and i was overwhelmed with the workload so that i didn’t have time to slowly digest. i was very overstimulated and anxious during my education, needed more breaks and time to rest but needed to be in school in some capacity for financial stability

my experience as an anthropology major in college- we often talked in class about the idea of objectivity, how it is impossible to achieve, and how power is reinforced through the lens of objectivity

the “critique of liberalism” from critical race theory - basically the idea that change through academics and politics takes too long. it is a slow process, and while the process happens, people are still being hurt. there needs to be change *now,* not when the research is published

fact i learned in class last year in social work school: it takes 15-20 years for social research to be implemented in the field

the idea of “one right way,” from a source about white supremacy culture. i don’t understand this text/idea completely, but my current understanding is that people in power usually understand that there is one right way to do things, and won’t consider/imagine/implement other ways of doing them. think about the persistence of capitalism, colonialism, war, bureaucracy, police, the legal system, prisons, electoral politics — we can see the harm they cause, but those in power will not give up their power to try alternatives

generally observing, thinking, reflecting on conversations i’ve had/witnessed about systemic oppression. understanding that many oppressed peoples are not given the time or space, or are too traumatized/hurt/in pain, to express what is going on for them. thinking about how even when oppressed people do express these feelings, they are often unheard because dominant groups are angry and defensive, hostile. and even with the best intentions, how can we help, if we can’t understand?

[z3r0-f4ilur3]

The Record Begins With a Song Of Rebellion

First Draft Of the Capitalist Surrealist Writing Project. Steal and appropriate, critique and interrogate, with the author's full endorsement and permission. Looking (back)(for)wyrds After the Bush interregneum and the long, terrible, progress destroying Reagan years, the American empire had something like a moment of hope. Riding high on the peace dividend and a delusion of idealism among the donating classes, the economic aristocracy which in effect was the senior partner in “American Democracy” (and so duly represented in both parties) and the voter was a paternalized junior to be both petted and protected had selected the Clinton dynasty. The grand bargain between labour and capital against the state resulted in the bitter fruit of the Bush years, as Conservatives paternalists rightly mocked the Clintonian urge to middling action on domestic issues while gladly partnering with him to rob labour at large. While a wealth transfer had already been going on as part of a trend for the better part of a century, this phase in which a semi-coherent ruling class dynamic of the donating classes and the government service classes became visible. It is beyond satire now, but this was not always so visible, as racism, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, various fundementalist and conservative (as well as equally harmful, supposedly liberal versions of the same) religious beliefs; Turtle Island was rife with reasons for temporary cross class solidarity in order to oppose an other or to advance an idealistic goal.

And yet moments of class consciousness and solidarity have perenially emerged, from the “grassroots” as the insiders like to say. They frame the people as “the base” or “the grassroots” and narrowly target their interests to make people find conflict with each other. It is irrelevent (for this missive) whether this is a conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious process; it is enough to notice it happening. Despite this, moments in the pre new-modern (to be defined later, promise~) politics that predate terms like Black Lives Matter or Trans Rights are Human Rights show that these movements represent an unbroken chain of revolutionary attempts at self-consciousness and conscience transformation that coincide and are just as important as any history of violence. The Ides of March, and the campaign of anonymous internet citizens against Scientology, represents such a moment. Occupy Wall Street was such a movement. “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used To It!” was such a phrase. The many quotes attributed to names like Mandela and James Baldwin; the Black Panthers, the revolutionary feminists, the Hippie movement, down back to the (In the American mind) hoary days of yore when the Wide Awakes would march a brass band around the houses of pro slave Senators.

It is a poor yet accurate summation to say that the ‘present’ (a dubious notion) political reality is the sum of all of these and more; a reader can orient themselves to the history of late stage capitalism by the growth of the donating classes influence and the acceleration of their detachment from society at large. Moments which also impact this reality are the donating classes sense of pessimism about the future; the devaluing of nearly all forms of labour, the increasing visibility of law enforcement brutality; the list can be referenced in the moment to moment, wide eyed and angry reporting of self-matyring, news-junkie amateur journalists found anywhere online, the shocked and angry expressions of young activists at protests and the weary, numbed faces of the old. Up and down the class system, there has been a wide spread death of hope.

Enter the climate crisis.

Before climate consciousness achieved real steam, our escatological fears were (mostly) confined to the realm of human action or cosmic events unimaginable (and unrelatable) to the modern person’s experience of life. For decades, the effects of climate change were reported to a world told not to care. As Terrance Mkenna said, ““The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.”

The impact of this can and will be expanded upon, but it is safe to say that the bubble has been popped. Whatever finds popular currency within the dialogue around it, that the climate is changing rapidly in ways inemical to human society at large/at present is true by material impact; people everywhere have experienced some negative result of the changing conditions, and there is a rising anxiety in the classes who cannot afford an escape pod or fortress bunker that the people they’ve entrusted themselves to intend to withdraw to safety and abandon them, or even expose them to more harm in order to “make more of the earth’s carrying weight available in the reclamation” (this kind of talk is not alien to them, though this specific quotation is my own invention.

It is important to acknowledge that the bubble has popped. It is the exclamation on Capitalist Realism; it is the moment of awareness, that encounter with a death of hope, in which Capitalist Surrealism, our phenomenological experience of the Capitalist Real, is born. While this Surrealist stage is both uncomfortable and has deleterious effects on the human condition, it represents the chink in the armour of banality and inertia, and the diminishing politics of the powerful. The sense that anything, absolutely *anything,* can happen to you, is both incredibly terrifying, and when looked at squarely, an opportunity for radical freedom.

It is this radical freedom that we see ourselves invited to in the many facets of human expression and convention which have experienced an awakening of new consciousness (or the restoration of old ones. Beliefs, ways of interacting with the world, and surviving are no longer benefited by or even neutrally treated by their operating environment anymore; if the complete weight of propaganda in circulation at the moment could be translated into sound, it would present an impenetrable and unlistenable wall.

It is that environment that individual ideologies not sanctioned by the operating environment have struggled against; all of them now have new life and vigor because despite that wall, and the spectacle societies which generate them, the literal truth of material impacts trump all prior arguments. With awareness of most likely outcomes of the climate crisis on a sliding scale, we see radicalization and existential depression of all varieties spike; the answers they attempt to generate to these apparent conditions lack hope in broad but uneven spikes along that scale of awareness, with the suicidally depressed expert climatologist and the radical anarcho-primitivist sharing the same ontological space in orientation to that crisis.

This project, among other things, is an attempt to generate an alternative answer (what that project consists of is entirely based in literature and mutual aid, the oldest Christian platforms for emancipatory action.) Terms like Solarpunk and Cloud City Futures approach but fail to capture the spirit of an alternative answer, mostly with an appeal to the world of aesthetics, a dubious method for summoning change at best. Terminology alone, or even in tandem with education, is also not sufficient; the noise environment they enter into immediately drowns out the creators meaning, especially if these terms are successful and gain currency with the wealthy.

Rather, we must articulate the positive from all our apparent negatives: The apocalyptic futures we anticipate cannot begin actually describe the terrain of the future, and the apparancy of our material conditions impact on our lives is now drowning out the sound of the standing ideologies. This is a brave time, where people blaze trails for others to follow out of the collapsing structures of the past and into the dwelling places of the new future. Our experience of reality, though surreal, has now unlocked an awareness of an apparent power: making meaning.

It is with the tools of meaning-making that these, who are the heirs of their elders, queer and colour revolutionary and indigenous land defender and abolitionist, pioneer the hopeful vistas of the future. It is necessary that they *be* hopeful; it was the Buddha who taught that people deceived by Samsara may be “deceived” by the apparent gifts of pursuing enlightenment, the majority of which are ancillary incidentals not to be meditated on. The king calls his indolent heirs out of the burning palace with a promise of gifts; when they arrive, they protest the lack of gifts, but it is in his embrace of them we realize they are the gift, and their survival was worth the promise of chariots and ponies.

But there must also be chariots, and ponies; luxuries, and finery; the grim tools of “defense” and all the things the human animal finds comforting in their resting environment to assure them of its stability. In the Dao De Jing, (Though Mueller butchers the poetry,) the Sage articulates this and describes how to create it: “Let there be a small country with few people,

Who, even having much machinery, don't use it.

Who take death seriously and don't wander far away.

Even though they have boats and carriages, they never ride in them.

Having armor and weapons, they never go to war.

Let them return to measurement by tying knots in rope.

Sweeten their food, give them nice clothes, a peaceful abode and a relaxed life.

Even though the next country can be seen and its doges and chickens can be heard,

The people will grow old and die without visiting each other's land.” A.C. Mueller Translation, The Dao De Jing, Attributed to Lao Tzu

It is as naked an appeal to a return to the life of the community and the village as can be found. A return to idigenous ways of being, which speaks to the preservation of folk ways, while the reality that the sage is administering them (even if only by moral teaching) shows a potential for new ideas to be instanced; innovation is not a property innate to the colonizing and walled world, and memetic culture and the society of truth-telling through representation around it reflect callbacks to this desire. The political movement around Land Back, while perennial to the causes of indigenous people, crystalizes an actionable answer for individuals and collectives to support. Its cousins in other colour movements, many of them representing indigenous people displaced by imperialism in the first place, are also generative of positive futures; it is a fact of history that as the rights of people classified as “minorities” are raised, the general quality of life for all in society rises, with the exception of those who could never be touched but by the highest tides.

These movements and moments of consciousness are their own inestimable goods, not mere ends for the would be conscious person to hijack for their goals. This is in fact a position inimical to the success of any of these movements; grifting starts at home, and it is the white leftist who is more easily conquered by the white liberal, since neither of them have conquered their own whiteness in the first place. But that supporting them generates positive benefits for all can only be argued against if you value the lives and comforts of some over others; those who value the general benefit first can see a clear path.

It is that clarity that gives meaning makers license to create the vistas of the future. It is the “Mandate of Heaven” that endorses the artists, a general operating license to create. Because the material impact of the present is louder than the noise of Capital, there an outburst of fertility and growth, the very seeds of hope, breaking out in the midst of this Surrealism. It is with the tools of meaning making, and the canvas of the crisis, that people escape the real.

[internaljiujitsu]

Negrito: Race In The Latino Community

I had lots of nicknames growing up. Bolita (little ball) when I was a toddler because I was round. Jun (short for Junior), because I share a name with my dad. But the monikers I heard most from my mom and extended family were Negro (black), Negrito (little black) or Negrolo (black something or other). Notice a pattern?

As the darkest person in my Puerto Rican family, that’s how my loved ones would address me. It’s a common practice in Latino cultures. Identifying someone by their color, frowned upon in politically correct, modern society, has morphed into a term of endearment among racially diverse Latinos. Or so it seems.

Despite the wide range of hues within Latino culture that would suggest an evolved view of skin color, these societies are just as racist as any dusty mid western town full of red cap wearing “Americans.”

When a black South African, Zonzibini Tunzi, beat out Ms. Puerto Rico for the ridiculous Ms. Universe crown, the supervisor for the Island’s Education Department called the winner, “La prima de Shaka Zulu.” It means Shaka Zulu’s cousin. You know, the legendary African military leader.

In case you were wondering, there is no relation.

In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo had forty thousand Hatitian migrants massacred to “whiten” the population of the Caribbean nation. Sixty years later, every Dominican in the world hailed the dark skinned Sammy Sosa as one of their own when he chased Babe Ruth’s legendary home run record.

And now — twenty years after that — Sammy Sosa is white.

In the eighties, my friends and family referred to African American people as “Morenos” (Dark Skinned) or “Cocolos” (a term originating with a dark skin group of people in The Dominican Republic.) We were all living in the same impoverished, dilapidated neighborhood together, but never felt the same. There was always an us against them attitude. We often felt as if we needed to fight for respect within our own neighborhood while buying into media perceptions of what it meant to be black and brown. And what we saw around us everyday did little to give us faith in ourselves or our darker brethren.

But I could blend in anywhere — while feeling comfortable nowhere. I belonged to a light skinned (except for me and my dad) Puerto Rican family growing up in a black neighborhood but I found myself relating more to white culture. While the Cosby Show was number one, I watched Family Ties. While kids were listening to Chuck D or KRS 1, I was head banging to Guns and Roses. I hated baggy clothes, preferring tight jeans and t-shirts. But I didn’t feel like I was rebelling - I just liked what I liked, and got plenty of shit for it.

To me, the Cosby show was bullshit. That’s not how it was for the black and brown people I knew. It was fantasy. Family Ties I had seen play out before my own eyes at white friends’ homes with cookie cutter lives that seemed perfect (spoiler alert: they weren’t). I wanted what they had so badly — peace of mind and enthusiasm for the future — and I wasn’t finding it where I lived.

I also hated my brother at the time (who I love to death) and wanted to be the opposite of him. He was a thug who always gave my parents headaches. He set a terrible example for his little brother while constantly asserting the fact that he was six years older and wiser. Once I stopped idolizing him, I detested everything he stood for. He has long since proven me and the old neighborhood wrong.

It took me years to become as secure as I am, but even now I get shit from people in my life. I’ve embraced my heritage and have ensured that my five year old daughter does the same. But when my parents hear my daughter speak proper Spanish without a Puerto Rican accent, they make fun of us. She’s been attending a Spanish speaking school since she was two. Her mother and I have attempted to be consistent with the dialect we use with her. That means she actually rolls her r’s and doesn’t sound like she’s gonna hock a loogie when she says “carro” or “perro.” My family thinks it’s fucking hilarious.

But it’s not just family. In a recent conversion with an old friend who had just retired from the police department, he called me an “Oreo.” Black on the outside and white on the inside. This guy is in his fifties. I chuckled when he said it, but haven’t returned his calls since.

The thing is, I know he was just fucking around. He himself is of mixed race and sounds like an Irish American with a Brooklyn accent, but looks Japanese. But there is something about police perception of dark skin people, how we are supposed to sound, that bugged me about what he said.

There’s too much chuckling that goes on. Too much nodding. A former close friend of mine, who is half Puerto Rican and married to a dark skinned Dominican woman, once complained that a guy he knew had “niggered up” his car ( because he added shiny rims, window tint and other bells and whistles). It wasn’t the first time I heard him use the word. Each time it turned my stomach. I didn’t get it — I was his friend. Both me and his wife would have been denied access to white bathrooms and water fountains. Just because we did not identify with black culture didn’t mean we wouldn’t be exposed to the same bigotry and hatred. What the fuck? It was too much for me to overlook. We haven’t spoken in years.

There was an ugly song I remember from the old neighborhood back in the day. There were two versions:

“A fight, a fight, a nigger and a white, the black don’t win, we all jump in.”

Or,

“A fight, a fight, a nigger and a white, the white don’t win, we all jump in.”

Which one you sang depended on who you were with. Which “us” against which “them?”

I remember, as a teenager, going to the Sunset Park pool in Brooklyn with a bunch of Latino boys. On the way home, there was a group of black kids walking ahead of us. The group I was with, only one of whom was my close friend, started taunting them. They hurled racial epitaphs and threats at the black kids for being in their neighborhood. I was silent and utterly confused.

As a kid, it was actually my one close white friend, Jesse, who was the least racist kid I knew. He might have been the most genuine friend I ever had. I stopped returning his calls because I didn’t trust his friendship. Not because of anything he did — My negative view of myself kept me from believing that he really wanted to be my friend. Why would he? He was from a great family that lived in a beautiful house and valued the things that mattered to me but weren’t for me.

When I hung out with Jesse’s friends, the chip on my shoulder was always ready to bash someone over the head. At a party in some kid’s basement, someone spilled a drink. The host, an Italian kid that I didn’t know, asked me to help clean it up. I told him to go fuck himself. Then he asked me, “What are you?”

The party ended when I dragged him down a staircase and started beating him down before being pulled off and barely escaping the awaiting mob. I am my brother’s brother, after all.

So even though I felt like a Martian in my own neighborhood and knew I wanted better, I didn’t think I belonged on the other side either. I was stuck in this bizarre place where the only role models I had were Roberto Clemente, Eric Estrada and Slater. I never knew anyone else successful that looked like me. At the same time it seemed everyone around me was determined to make sure I never forgot where I belonged.

When I was twelve years old, I refused to attend my zone school because it had a reputation for being the worst in the city. It wasn’t my parents that refused, it was me. I told my mom and dad I would not go to junior high unless they transferred me. What if I hadn’t done that?

As it turns out, the school I ended up going to (because my dad used a friend’s address) was in a good part of town and was the best public education I ever experienced. The work was so advanced that I went from being one of the smartest kids in class to struggling. I actually had to study — something I never had to do much of and found excruciatingly boring. At that new school, I felt like the bad boy. The outcast. The kid that didn’t quite belong and couldn’t keep up.

My grades suffered that year, and when I transferred to a another school, I wasn’t placed in the gifted program for the first time in my scholastic career. I petitioned the principal and pleaded my case, explaining the difficult circumstances of the previous year and promising that I would shine in his “7SP“ class, which got to skip the eight grade and go straight to “9SP” in the fall. Like when I refused to go to that war zone of a school, I once again stood up for my own education. I was thirteen years old.

The work that year was far easier than what I had learned at the other school. I breezed through. The kind of disparity that existed between the two public middle schools I attended is indicative of the subpar education that children of color receive within what is supposed to be one school system. Kids in bad schools aren’t exposed to the same world that their crosstown rivals are and are ill prepared for the reality that awaits — be it a college admissions exam or the job market. Those who do not take it upon themselves to find opportunities for advancement can’t rely on working parents with little time or education to advocate for them. They are left with shitty choices and no one to champion their cause.

The scourge of poverty and racism is further sullied by the structural hierarchy of “shade” in communities of color. In the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, the trailblazing abolitionist and former slave writes of the preferential treatment lighter slaves received, even among the others in bondage. Proximity to whiteness, then and now, is proximity to power and privilege.

In the late 1700’s, Spain instituted the process of gracias al sacar. Mixed race people could purchase a decree that converted them to white. One such royal decree granted to Cuban Manuel Baez in 1760 says that it erased “the defect that you suffer from birth and leave you able and capable as if you did not have it.” Ain’t that some shit.

Alice Walker coined the term “colorism” in her book, “In Search of Our Mother’s Garden”. She describes “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on color.” Research has shown that skin tone affects the outcome of job interviews, court cases and elections. This is not a secret among people of color. They grow up believing that the whiter they look, the easier they’ll have it.

How does that make a kid feel who wants so badly to get ahead in life but has the mirror, the media and the world outside his window saying he doesn’t stand a chance? As if even after you do all the work and get to the finish line, the tape will be pulled back another few feet each time you stretch to get across. The life you want will be just out of reach, no matter how long or how fast you run.

There has been a delusion among some that because we’ve had a black president, hip hope rules the world and the Rock is the world’s biggest movie star, racism doesn’t exist anymore. There are people of color in positions of power and prestige, but they are few and far between. There just hasn’t been enough time for all the seeds of opportunity that were only planted a generation or two or three ago to compete with those who have seemingly inherited an eternity of racial privilege. Just because so many people fought for and finally earned some basic human rights doesn’t mean the playing field has been leveled.

The destruction of the long standing racial hierarchy is a challenging ongoing project that the world must decide to address together. The perpetuation of negative stereotypes of black and brown people is not only meant to strike fear in every suburban household, but to reinforce in the mind of the oppressed their role in society. Centuries of subjugation have purposefully convinced young men and women of color that they are born with an inherent disadvantage. Then, once their will to fight was clear, the oppressors barked that those they once lorded over should be grateful to simply be out of their chains.

It is up to people of color, whether African American, Latino, West Indian, or any other subdivision of “black” that may exist, to burn down the old models. The carefully calculated lie that “whiteness” is more attractive, desirable or indicative of ability must be deleted from our main frame. We must believe we are just as capable, because we obviously are. We must know that we have the opportunities, even if we have to work harder for them. And we cannot fight among ourselves, to the delight of those that would sooner see us dead, in jail or all together erased from the annals of history.

With dog whistles long having been discarded in favor of bull horns, the paper thin veil has been lifted from our union. In a country already in pieces, further division because of infighting is not something people of color, no matter their shade, can afford.

[monicalorandavis]

I was an intern at Comedy Central and it mostly sucked

File this under the category of “Who Cares?”

Everybody knows interns (at basically every company) are treated like shit.  They are used strictly for running errands and little else. It was likely that a TV network should follow suit. To no one’s surprise, Comedy Central treated interns like shit. I was. The interns around me were. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I had so little work experience and I was so grateful for the opportunity that I figured it was part of the process of getting to where you wanted to be. It wasn’t until I ran into Joe, an assistant (who had particularly made my life hell) at a party a few years later that I even thought about how mean he had been to me. I wanted to let it go. But he had been really fucking mean and it stung to think about. He wasn’t alone. It was actually a whole group of assistants who I’d felt had humiliated me. I remember going to lunch at the same time the assistants were leaving for lunch. They caught the elevator and I had asked to join, trailing just a step behind them. Joe barked “No”, closed the elevator doors in my face and I heard them all laughing at me on the way down. I stared at the closed doors, shocked. Never in my life had I been treated like such a loser. I was in a fucking teen movie being bullied by complete pricks. And the worst part was, these people were definitely the kids who’d been bullied.

I caught the next elevator and when I arrived on the ground level, they were waiting for me. They didn’t say anything. They looked guilty like they’d realized they’d been mean to an intern who would likely say something to someone in HR and decided to extend me the kindness of waiting for me. Only I didn’t want them to wait for me and I would never say anything. Unlike them, I didn’t like making people feel like shit. We walked to get salads in silence. They resumed their conversation but I paid and left before them. It was so weird after that. For like a day. And then, it started all over again.

There were exceptions during that time and I would like to name them and give them all their credit. Tony, one of the early writer/producers of Workaholics (a gig he got during my time there), was fabulously kind to me. He never made me feel lame or stupid and I was sad to see him go even though I knew writing was his goal. Walter was nice. Gary was nice. Seth. But I have forgotten many people’s names and you’ll forgive me as this was almost a decade ago. That time exists in a haze. I was living downtown with two of my girlfriends in a loft apartment that didn’t have walls. I had no bedroom. Just an upstairs “room” with a bathroom with a toilet but no shower. I paid $500 a month for a glorified port-a-potty and thus, acted like a degenerate. Every night, I either smoked weed until I fell asleep or scoured the streets for a cute boy to spend the night with. It was during that time that I was lucky enough to get an internship at a company that could change the course of my life - Comedy Central. It was a gift to work there and I knew it. I didn’t have any Hollywood connections.This was it. I would take it seriously, I promised myself. So, I did.

Comedy Central used to be the mecca. Before Tosh.0 and Jim Jefferies, it was the home of Chappelle’s Show. I am not exaggerating when I tell you this: that show changed the whole goddamn world and I was no exception. it changed me. It was the blueprint. Comedy could be brutal on white people. It could get real and gross and political and stupid all at the same time. Comedy nerds like me ate it up.

Dave Chappelle’s two season masterpiece of a show infected college campuses in 2004 when it was released on DVD. That was the year I started college. By happenstance, I was part of the DVD revolution. We would crowd into each other’s dorm rooms and cry laughing and then watch the same episode again. It caught fire. Dave Chappelle bridged the gap between black and white, famous and normal while still keeping himself removed from the whole thing, aloof - distinguished...better than us. His skewering of racism was a glass through which we could see in fact, we were all participants in the same system albeit on other sides. 

So, Chappelle’s Show was important to me. I wanted to work at a place that had created art. I would try to shine there and let my own ideas blossom into projects.

But in spite of my eagerness, I was aware at the time (as we all were) that Comedy Central had paid Dave Chappelle $50 million for a third season but instead of delivering, he walked off set and fled to Africa. This was the story we were told. This was before Twitter and Instagram. The internet swirled with rumors that he had gone crazy and was going to live in Africa forever. He had abandoned Hollywood for good.

But the whole thing stank of racism, buried just underneath the surface. Why was Chappelle suddenly crazy when he didn’t want a huge sum of money? Yes, that’s a huge sum of money but deep down I thought, those people are trying to exploit him. Intuitively I felt like Chappelle knew he was part of a bigger racial-bridging that was allowing white people access to private areas of black culture. He had invited fans to shout famous lines back at him. Lines that Chappelle himself and other black actors had killed with. But, lines that white fans should never say. They were insensitive to the privilege shared by black people to communicate to other black people. White people want to say the n-word and it’s not theirs to say. It’s a truth other black comedians have shared.

When Chris Rock was caught in conversations with racists who relayed his “niggers versus black people” bit back to him he retired it permanently. The price of being an honest black comedian in this country is that white people can retell your insider information as intel. White people who would otherwise have no interaction with black people now has an arsenal of information. They have evidence that was not acquired through firsthand experience. They have heard the inner monologue of black America and instead of fixing racial injustice, they are repeating their favorite lines. And in spite of all of that, in spite of all the drama between Comedy Central and Dave Chappelle, in spite of the racial implications the media had thrown around, I got a job as an intern in hopes just being in the same office that created Chappelle’s Show could imbue me with some genius or good fortune.

It didn’t.

It was whack. There were like 40 of us on a rotating schedule where three of us would work certain days together and then another three would work another group of days and sometimes you would see other interns on your day because they couldn’t come in on their regular day. Since there were so many interns doing the work that one capable assistant could perform we were all basically twiddling our thumbs, trying to look useful and eager. Some interns dazzled executives with their epic notes on scripts, replete with a solid three act structure and relevant examples, figures, marketing suggestions. Others buried their noses up anyone’s ass who lingered near them long enough, offering to get coffee, lunch, snacks, dry cleaning, children from daycare, gifts for spouses, you name it. I employed none of these strategies. I scoped the most eligible bachelors and tried to dazzle them with my charms. The married ones would have been the smarter bet. Married men are more willing to go out on a limb for a cute, inexperienced graduate with a lot to prove. They won’t cheat but they like feeling important to women still so they’ll toss around bread crumbs. The single ones are still so obsessed with themselves that they can’t see far enough past their noses to help. I was vying for the attention of one executive I was sure would marry me, given I had enough alone time with him in the kitchen, when I learned he was getting engaged. It was devastating. Of course I would choose to be in love with someone just about to propose.

It dawned on me that marrying your way into the entertainment business was sort of gross and I was at Comedy Central to make a name for myself. Meaning, I should make it for myself. Not rely on somebody else giving me a handout. I had to go out and earn my job. Unfortunately, it seemed that only a few at Comedy Central had actually earned their job from sheer hard work. Most people had arrived there from a combination of knowing someone and favors and white privilege that is the winningest cocktail of all time. But, even they didn’t really like their jobs. It made no sense. The ones with the worst attitudes, who were the most lazy, cranky, emotionally unhinged seemed to know the most people. And they hated everything and everyone.

Below them, were us, the interns. And to my chagrin, I’d been wasting entire weeks of time pining over some man who’d hardly noticed me while these nerds were working their asses off. I was light years behind and frankly, unwilling to break my back for a job that didn’t seem like it would ever come my way. I was this sore thumb. I felt like a step sister and everyone else was The Brady Bunch. Primarily, I looked very different than everyone there. I wore ripped jeans and had tattoos and listened to hip hop. Wearing hoop earrings to work basically identified me as a member of the Crips. These people were so white and goofy that the only person of color they’d managed to hire had gone to private school their entire lives.

This sounds bratty already and I swear to God, I am not an ungrateful asshole. I am writing this to say that the experience crushed me a little bit. I left the internship at the end of the summer with no interest in staying in touch with anyone. With the exception of running into Joe at a party, I’ve run into one girl, Sarah, at my exercise class. I reveled when she feigned confusion when I asked if she’d remembered me from Comedy Central three years prior. I thought to myself, “I’m about to ruin this bitch’s day” and I’d like to think that her trembling, noodle-like legs during my class were some karmic retribution for her unkindness.

Besides that, I have no ill feelings towards anyone presently. To be fair, the assistants were only a year or two older than me at the time and wielding an unnatural amount of power. They did not handle power well. Not many do.

[darylelockhart]

How afrofuturism gives Black people the confidence to survive doubt and anti-Blackness

by Anthony Q. Briggs and Warren Clarke

Afrofuturism, like the kind seen in Marvel’s Black Panther, allows Black people to imagine themselves into the future. Marvel Studios

In 2018, Black people globally got a signal of hope when director Ryan Coogler and Marvel Studios released the critically acclaimed movie, Black Panther. While few knew of the Black Panther as a superhero despite the comic being released in the 1960s, millions now know of him because of the film’s overwhelming success.

Its success can be due, in part, because of what it tells us about Black people’s futures. Many Black people — seeking belonging and better outcomes for their lives — have turned to afrofuturism as the source of optimism. According to afrofuturist expert and author Ytasha Womack, afrofuturism refers to “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation … Afrofuturists redefine culture and notions of Blackness for today and the future by combining elements of science fiction, historical fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, afrocentricity and magic realism with non-western beliefs.”

Black Panther had Black people chanting “Wakanda Forever,” while many imagined that they too could put on the Black Panther suit to gain a sense of belonging. Black people, including Canadians, believed that Wakanda, the utopian city where the Black Panther resides, is a real place. For Black Canadians, Wakanda offers a place that exists outside the harsh reality of an anti-Black white settler narrative that is anti-Black.

Black legal scholar Lolita Buckner Inniss says anti-Black racism is deeply enmeshed in the Canadian social fabric. Anti-Black racism cuts deep enough so that many, if not all, Black Canadians feel there is no hope for a better future.

Leaving family but not tradition

Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti must deal with racism and isolation as she traverses a universe that does not value her people’s knowledge. (Tor Books)

Afrofuturism in cinema is but one source. Writer Nnedi Okorafor’s 2015 science fiction novella, Binti, features a Black woman protagonist named Binti Ekeopara Zuzu Dambu Kaipka. Binti is an intelligent woman leader of the Himba tribe whose genius gets her into to the prestigious Oomza University, which floats about the galaxy. Binti is the first member of the Himba ethnic people to attend the school. Her decision to attend is met with ridicule, laughter and threats to her life due to the fear and insecurities of her people.

Her people have never been allowed to imagine futures beyond their traditional way of life and identification with the land. Binti states:

We Himba don’t travel. We stay put. Our ancestral land is life; move away from it and you diminish. We even cover our bodies with it. Otjize is red land. Here in the launch port, most were Khoush and a few other non-Himba. Here, I was an outsider; I was outside.

She echoes the social challenges that Black people face when embarking upon new ways of living after leaving traditional family and cultural contexts. Often, their families and cultures pressure them to remain entrenched within the known confines of family, culture and community, rather than explore the new and unknown.

One of us, Anthony, was the first member of his immediate family to attend post-secondary education and graduate school. He wanted to apply to graduate school but had to fight internalized feelings of low self-worth that insisted he did not belong in academia. Indeed, a lack of self-confidence influenced the choice to avoid applying to programs that required a high grade-point average with a full scholarship because he did not believe he would be accepted.

Blazing a trail to a Black future

In her village, Binti had been one of the few who used knowledge to create peace in her tribe, so she had to overcome pressure to remain in the village in order to embrace new learning. On a spaceship, travelling from her village to the Oomza University, Binti as the only Himba at the university encounters another obstacle: the false assumption that people from her land are evil, dirty and primitive.

In one moment, one of the Khoush (a different lighter-skinned tribe) students touches Binti’s braids out of curiosity and without consent. Her hair is mixed with sweet smelling red clay and perfume called Otijze, which is connected to her cultural heritage. One of the Khoush students responds that it has a horrible smell, suggesting a passive discriminatory logic of sanitation.

One can observe strong echoes of the attitudes of privileged whites towards high-priority Black neighbourhoods whose inhabitants are stereotyped as criminal, irrational, impoverished and unintelligent. The book suggests that there is no such thing as neutral space and that structural inequities and racial inequalities make space and place difficult to navigate, especially in elitist environments.

But Binti is gripped by the challenge of the new. Her journey of self-discovery begins when she decides to leave village life, defying her ancestors’ dedication to their land and cultural identity. Binti explains that tribal knowledge was handed down orally as her father had taught her 300 years of oral lessons “about astrolabes including how they worked, the art of them, the true negotiation of them, the lineage … circuits, wire, metals, oils, heat, electricity, math current and sand bar.” Her mother had also transmitted mathematical insights and gifts, but never in formal educational settings. Family unity and protection were paramount.

Binti symbolizes the trailblazer who encounters politics, racism, stereotypes, ignorance, systemic inequalities, gender inequities, classism and so on. Additionally, she faces the strong pull of past traditions since she is the first member of her family and tribe to attend a formal educational institute.

Afrofuturism offers a way for Black people to envision their futures, as Missy Elliot’s futuristic music videos exemplify.

Some Black individuals living such stories will inevitably encounter feelings of isolation, lack of belonging and self-doubt. Their internal battles will pit self-trust and the drive towards the new against the safety and security of the past. They will have to develop a secure sense of self and an understanding that it does not matter how far they travel among the galaxies because everyone has unique gifts they can contribute to the universe.

Against the pull of anxieties and insecurities, Anthony graduated with a master’s degree and a PhD; he currently has a post-doctoral fellowship — yet is in another galaxy of his own among the stars.

Afro-Caribbean Black people living in white settler, colonized nations such as Canada face discrimination and negative stereotypes. Afrofuturism can enable Black communities to reimagine new possibilities, especially when the future trajectory for Black Canadians is at times uncertain.

About The Authors:

Anthony Q. Briggs, Research Fellow, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice, Oakland University and Warren Clarke, PhD student, Department of Sociology, Carleton University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

[mrpotatobrown]

30. Catarack

Every day you work on a different unit. Title of this Post is the name of the unit I was stationed at today. Rules of this game? Like an air rifle shoot there are many targets standing, but you’re handed 3 balls instead. Smash any three targets down and you win a prize. Each target (in a deflated attempt to be Safari related) is shaped as a different animal; many of which we don’t even have at this park anymore. For example, a few are shaped as monkeys which the Safari used to have, but have since been wiped out; I heard it was because of a Monkey Aids pandemic... that or they were vandalising too many cars in the Drive through. It’s all Chinese whispers here, that’s what I’m finding out, and nothing has made that more apparent than the work colleague who I shared Catarack with for most of this afternoon. 

He started a little later than me, was called in because the number of customers was picking up throughout the day, only for it to die out almost instantly, leaving this stranger and I to fill the time with... conversation.

I hope the three dots preceding the word ‘conversation’ illustrated how lowly I thought of this encounter, but truth is I don’t want to be a negative Nancy (a state I believe I entered in my previous post). I’m not saying I want to be cheery about everything, but most certainly I do believe there’s a way to discuss ideas without them all leading to talking someone down from the edge of a bridge because the air is so saturated with despair. 

Negativity breeds negativity.

So, throwing this out there, I’m not the kind of Potato to hit it out the park (Or should I say SAFARI park) when it comes to conversation. This is the kind of encounter I’ll have to get better at (starting with me not calling them encounters as if I’m meeting an alien), but this really was a bad conversation, and I blame it on him, but I want to discuss this in a good spirited glass half full kind of way, and maybe take some of the responsibility on my own back like a good Potato.

What’s brought on this ‘bright side’ attitude? Well, I’m potentially going to be working here for a while, and from my previous post I saw the path I had laid out in front of me and well.... yeah, its that bridge scenario; lets not go there. If you see a turning you don’t want to take, you don’t take it.

So: Lets discuss what he said, say “Oh holy god, lets leave” and take a tangent down a better route; because he’s not the kind of guy who talks people down from bridges, he’s the kind of guy who shoves them off.

This person is filled with hate with a capital H, and this is really best exemplified by his attitude to customers. See, we have all kind of nationalities of people rocking up to this animal park, as it’s a pretty good tourist destination. This guy, with conversation quickly drying out between us (how much similar ground do we really share when he comes from above it and I was born below) would just come out with something absurdly offensive as if to try and get a reaction out of me. Not in an actively trying to offend me kind of way, but rather to get a response; he was trying to be interesting. He was trying to fascinate me; by saying racist derivative things about the customers.

This source of desperation to look like a man through ‘thought out opinions’ governed by fear really just revealed a little boy hiding in a Trojan horse, wanting to look like a gift; strong and remarkable, he’d creep through your gates and then BOOM! He’s inside you... well, not in that way, that’s condoned as rape, but... well, maybe it was a form of assault, because I certainly wasn’t allowing him in. Hell, if I could I’d burn the big wooden horse down where it stood before it even had a chance to get in.

Sadly, he did get the jump on me, because I didn’t stand up against him. I just didn’t know what to say. I could barely remember the name of the guy and he was landing this heavy stuff on me, but masked with a smile like he wanted to be my friend. This angered me the most, not necessarily because of this shell of a man, but rather me not challenging him; it made me feel like I contributed. I didn't stamp out the fire named racism, and in that had allowed it to foster and grow inside him so he could spread it to the next work colleague he worked with. 

It was a disease that needed to be stopped, and I let it go on.

This fear that was building up inside him was a warped logic that I believe he had built up as a wall of defence. Serving people that frustrated him and desperate to rise himself up the ranks on where he thought he stood, he had to create a system of logic in his mind that validated him, made him feel strong; further than that, he had to propagate that idea to further validate it, so he could feel secure in his new ranks as a “Straight White Male”. Oh how safe he must feel being the ‘pure’ race, even though there are SO many reasons so many of these people he served were so far above him in regards of... well, so many things. But in this little system he had built, they were beneath him.

His ideas, these feelings that made him feel safe, were like the attributes we assigned to luck. The very logic of them don’t make sense as LUCK doesn’t exist, it’s something that just validates our choices and adds structure to this scary unpredictable world that’s so structures. Luck makes us feel there’s something safeguarding our choices, that someone’s watching our back. 

This very same idea of LUCK is at play when someone plays our game. They walk passed and we say “Fancy your Luck” and if they lose we say “Bad Luck”, because it isn’t their fault when they muck up, it’s out of their control, but don’t worry; blame your mistakes of losing on something else and you’ll come up top in the end.

Other systems come into play as well when playing this game. For example, maybe they’ll pick a type of animal as a target; only hit the Monkeys down for example, because they’re their favourite animal. But just like race, every type of target we got up there stand equal, and choosing one over another has absolutely no benefit.

But as long as it fits their logic, it all makes sense. Actually get them to confront the ugly truth and they’ll crumple up as they’re not ready to know they’re ‘not on top’.

And this colleague who works with me is most certainly ‘not on top’. And neither was I as I stood there in silence listening to him mouth off about such horrifying ideas he had filled himself with.

I should of stamped it out, like the the potential Aids pandemic that killed the monkeys, or the Chinese whispers this rumour originated from. These ideas spread, in all their toxic evilness; they bring everyone down, one by one like the targets of my game. And everyone will feel like a winner, everyone will raise the ranks in their self assemble system of lies, but in reality they’ll be hollowed out like I was being right now by the darkness that was spreading from within. It spreads like tumours, like a disease, because it is in itself contagious.

Negativity breeds negativity.