Where do I start? Last week the US government murdered Troy Davis and as I write this the government is showing no signs of collapsing in the near future. As I look for signs that Black folks are about to engage in organized confrontation with a nation state that is determined to render us civically, socially, and physically dead I see none. I wonder have we slipped into a delusional fantasy, a fantasy that is based on nostalgia for the 1960s and 70s when it seemed that revolution was in progress.

I know that the radical groups of the 60s failed for their not-so-radical practices, but what I long for is the affect that created a sense that the bullshit that is part of the fabric of life today was on its way out. There was a feeling that the racist, sexist, anti-Black power structure could not continue to rule. I thought by now we would be past lynching Black men and instead we have a Republican party whose base is cheering the deaths carried out by the governor of Texas. I can only believe that they think the majority of those killed in Texas were Black.

I wonder if I’m paranoid when I wonder if the Tea Party is against Obama’s healthcare plan because it will allow some Black people to live longer. I don’t see any sign of liberation in the future nor do I see the vast majority of Black folks being willing to acknowledge the political climate that exists in relation to black folks. For example, in Michigan Republicans want to take food stamps if you own a car worth more than $15,000. This echoes "welfare queens in Cadillacs." In the meantime Black Detroit and Saginaw with its larger numbers of Black folks will be starving. Any of the progress made financially is being wiped out by a recession with no end in sight and right wing policies aimed at eradicating us.

I thought the murder of Oscar Grant would be the last straw for Black folks. We are subjected to racial profiling, targeted for prison, and murdered by police who spend less than 2 years in jail if any time at all as in the case of Sean Bell. In light of a rapidly increasing onslaught against Black folks I thought by now we all would be giving much more consideration to the words of Dhoruba Bin Wahad., Bin Wahad wrote in response to the 2005 execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams:

Tookie Williams was executed to send a clarion signal to African youth that redemptive militancy is unacceptable - only rejection of your social history and complete surrender to the myths of white America could possibly save your life. In this sense, his execution was a commentary on the cowardice of many of today's Black leaders - who want to be both patriots and champions of Africans in America. This is the age of American empire, you can't be both.

I thought by now the realization that we can’t be patriots in a nation that is hell bent on destroying us would be forcing a strident voice to emerge from even the Black bourgeoisie. I’ve been wondering for years now what will it take to force those of use that believe that we are privileged to take a stand. Will we just quietly die?

I’m not longing for the conditions that brought about the militancy of the 1960s and 70s. I wish there would have never been a need for George and Jonathan Jackson. I wish we could have passed through the era of confronting the police and all that that has done to organic Black leadership without the damage. I wish Assata Shakur could walk free among us in the country where she was born, but she can’t. And as long as none of those wishes can't be true I have some others. I wish Black folk across the US would become unruly. I wish we would challenge every white, Asian, or Brown person on their anti-Black racism. I wish we would never give anyone a pass when they hate on Black folks, including other Black folks. I wish we would plot, conspire, sneak around, lie to the enemy, find ways to undermine white supremacy and the agencies that support it. Agencies like the public schools, public hospitals, police, prisons, and universities, the agencies that kill us. I wish young Black folk would talk to old Black folk and find out what they know. I wish old Black folk would talk to young Black folk and find out what they know. I wish every Black parent would raise their child to be a solider in this struggle, our Black struggle to be free of an enemy that cannot contain its murderous desire to destroy us. Teach them to love Black folks with all of our flaws.

I wish Black folk in the academy could learn to love those niggas in the hood. I wish the niggas in the hood could learn to respect what those niggas in the academy go through and find it in their hearts to teach what the struggle is. I wish we could all Black stand together and stand strong in the face of our murderous enemies and wage a beautiful struggle, a war motivated by love for Black folk. In Struggle!!!

Quote of the Week #9 -- In Relation to "The Help"

"No need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. I want to know your story. And then I will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you I write myself anew. I am still author, authority. I am still colonizer the speaking subject and you are now at the center of my talk." -- bell hooks. Marginality as a site of resistance, in R. Ferguson et al. (eds), Out There: Marginalization and contemporary Cultures. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1990: pp. 241-43.

"The Help" Costs Too Damn Much, or Notes on an Intra-Master Discussion

I just saw "The Help" and will probably read the book. While I agree with some that it is very important that people know the stories of how black women domestic workers experienced what I would call an updated form of slavery, there are a few things I noticed that lead me to believe that this film, despite being marketed something relevant to the dilemmas of black and white women alike, is really engaged primarily with the ethical dilemmas of white women. It is a discussion among slave masters about how to, in Fanon's words, "be nice to the niggers."

This film chooses to introduce the stories of the black women domestics through the medium of a white woman's story of redemption. In that regard it is a lot like "Cry Freedom," in which another white director shared what almost all black South Africans already knew about apartheid through the story of a white liberal man's suffering, dilemmas, risk, and transformation, and even "Fried Green Tomatoes," which, like "The Help," is also about a young white liberal woman who is something of a misfit in her segregated landscape but who graciously uses her privilege to protect the grateful groups of black people who would otherwise be without an advocate whose voice matters in the storyline.

Questions of Oscar-worthiness aside, there is a cost to sharing black narratives in this way, i.e., by channeling narrative of black suffering through the filters of the very people who cause the suffering. The devil is in the details that are included and those that are excluded.

For instance, there was nothing at all in the film about the relatively routine experience of sexual violence from white males (boys and men) that black women domestics experienced. (There is, however, the hint of domestic violence from black men--of course.) I hope the book mentions something of that glaringly obvious omission. Have you read it? Does it?

Also, we should note that the losses that the white women experience are ones that we actually see. In film and theater, things that we see (as opposed to things we are told about) tend to have a stronger effect on us, so when the film shows us the white women's suffering but doesn't show us the black women's suffering, we can tell for whom the film is really asking us to feel. There is that cost again. We hear in ample detail about the suffering the white women experience-- note, for example, the way we see Celia Foote's class-based exclusion from the middle-class white women's bridge circle-- while we do not see what Aibileen's (Viola Davis) loss of her son really looked like and we rarely come back to it. We do not go through that journey with Aibileen the way we go through Celia Foote's struggles with exclusion or through Skeeter's struggles with feeling like an outsider because of her politics.

One might also argue that the dilemmas we see of the white women ought to be of lesser weight than those that we do NOT see of the black women since one's class and one's politics are relatively changeable features, while Aibileen's loss of her son was because of something that is not changeable (blackness). When Yule Mae (Aunjanue Ellis) is arrested and the cop bludgeons her, we almost see it, but the camera cuts away just in time and we hear a soft sound. Graphic depictions of violence are often unnecessary. But we do SEE the suffering of the white women depicted amply. So it's almost like the film, much like the era it describes, participates in silencing black women's voices.

Indeed, the overall mode through which this film addresses the history of black women in neoslavery is as a comedy. Remember what Saidiya Hartman says: “When history is emplotted in the comic mode, its mode of historical explanation tends to be organicist and its ideological implications conservative.”

We can see some of this conservatism in how the black women characters never radically challenge the order. While Aibileen certainly changes in some important ways and has a faceoff toward the end that she might not have had in the beginning, the personal journey of the story centers mostly around the white women. Even Minny, powerful as she is, remains basically the same. Yes, these women were and are brave and strong for surviving what they did. But we already knew that. So who is this film really being told by and for? The story soft-pedals the black women's suffering and dampens their bravery by channeling it through the white woman's narrative.

Finally, the film shows racism as a matter of interpersonal relationships, no structures of power. Racism, when it appears in the film, comes from unsavory white women. Racism appears to be a personal fault that one can choose to perform or not to perform, as with Charlotte Phelan's (Allison Janney) firing of Constantine (Cicely Tyson).

I say all this to say that I don't think the end justifies the means. I don't think the cost of telling these narratives through the voice of a white woman is worth the violence that it does to black women's voices.