Bettina called around noon today to tell me about something she'd seen on the 11 alive news. Apparently they highlight a local teacher who's a "Class Act," you know special interest piece for the community and what not. So today it was Ms. Carla Russo's time to shine and they showed the Garden Hills Elementary engaged with her students. So towards the end of the segment, they interview the black girl in the class who enthusiastically says, "I love Ms. Russo! She gave us all nick names and mine is 'Jemima.'"
What?! Jemima?! Of course the news team is all smiles and completely oblivious to the problematic nature of such a comment. Needless to say they and Ms. Russo are getting a letter. As someone who has been misinterpreted by the press, I'm reserving judgment until I get a response. I mean maybe the girl's name sounds like Jemima or maybe giving black children archaic stereotypical nick names is some form of transgressive political action I am not yet hip to. Whatever.
I've been in deep contemplation about identity lately. Jah's post of Nikki's poem really resonated with me. I find it increasingly difficult to deal with people because of my politics, black men in particular. Recognizing gender inequity is not a very popular thing to do in the black community.
Black women who do are forever being lambasted for not dealing with the seemingly larger oppression of race, which forever privilege the experiences of black men. Male privilege and white privilege remain the two major stumbling blocks preventing black men and white women from uniting in a mutually beneficial way with black women. Because we will never be white or male, black feminists have never held the illusion that one day they'd be included in the dominant power structure. And so black men and white women continue to play the oppression olympics, never really seeing how they too will never fully enjoy the spoils of such a system.
The powers that be have indoctrinated us so well that black women will critique other black women who dare to bring gender violence in our community to light. Like Alice and The Color Purple, though not on such a large scale, FMLA members have faced a similar backlash for bringing to people's attention the intraracial misogyny in rap music.
I know where this comes from, this desire to turn a blind eye to gender violence in our communities. I know the history, how black men were "emasculated" slavery, unable "to provide" for their families and "protect their women" from the physical and sexual assaults they faced at the hands of abusive plantation owners. I know that black men were demonized as potential rapists of the coveted white woman and subsequently lynched for even seemingly looking in a white woman's direction.
And so there is this mythology of pre-colonial Africa, as a monolithic bastion free of patriarchy or the patriarchy that existed was of the benevolent type and therefore unproblematic. And it's pervasive; this has been voiced in my black masculinities class on numerous occasions as an unchallenged truth of how much better off we'd be as a people if we just returned to our roots. Dr. K's favorite and now my favorite feminist of The Continent Patricia McFadden said, "If civilization began in Africa, patriarchy probably did too. And so then, did women's resistance to it."
But it's lonely out her as a young black feminist. It makes it all the more clear that voluntary segregation or repatriations (to where?) is not the answer. I wish everyone would read and absorb and understand how these interlocking systems work. We have to learn to see our individual struggles as connected to the struggles of others. Ok. I'll stop waxing philosophical now.
First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller
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