This is a long post, only partially a rant.
What a razor’s edge: judgment!
Step forward! Shut up and listen! Step back! Silence is violence!
The voice of the hour responds: try being Black for a half hour.
Marshall your hatred and your good person biases and give them license, or don’t, for the hatred and biases both good and bad need no license. They like to go rogue. They operate on the sly. The rotten impulses will thwart and harm another’s soul, a Black person’s soul, whether you grant them permission or not. Being otherwise decent has nothing to do with it. Do a little reading for Christ’s sake.
So why must discrimination law require demonstration of INTENT? So bogus. Such a loophole.
So many ways to pose as ally, whether silent or speaking up. But, oh hallowed white person with every advantage coded into your DNA, silence from your earthworm lips surrounded by freckled skin prone to burning, no no silence is not acceptable.
Shout loud and clear and worry about getting it right and redeeming your moral points later.
(This business of hoping to earn badges toward redemption is not just a White Woman thing, BTW, it’s a very Catholic thing. So — fucking crucify me on two counts).
History shall condemn us if we do not, oh darling freckle-faced politicos, put our bodies on the front lines, yes, even our raggedy, lumpy bodies and yes, even during a pandemic. Protests? Maybe not. But calls and donations, yes. I’ve said it before.
TODAY: I shall call my reps in support of H.R. 51 — a bill regarding Washington, D.C.’s statehood. Why don’t you, too?
TODAY: I shout out the importance of all those down-ballot races. It’s not just the protests shrinking the response time between racial murder and indictment, it’s Black mayors and Black DA’s and Black police commissioners. Progressives of all races.
I long for the day when progress is measured by the absence of Black bodies gunned down by police and not by the swiftness of justice.
TODAY: I shall rest in the satisfaction of a Supreme Court acting like a court and not like an adjunct of the Executive (even though I’m inclined to move straight to dread about the tax case and did just that yesterday). In particular, I say HALLELUJAH AND FUCK YOU to trump for Neil Gorsuch authoring the LGBTQ opinion.
Have I lately been so satisfied by a court’s result?
(Well, yes, Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case. I CANNOT wait for him to sentence that traitorous ass).
TODAY: I shall finish one of the books by a Black author that I purchased in support of a week of buying Black writers (Instagram) (‘course, I’ve been doing this for years, letting myself buy bestsellers penned by Black writers LOOONNNG before they come out in paperback). Today? Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. It takes place on Antigua where Kincaid grew up and incidentally, where Eliza Lucas Pincnkey also grew up.
The Solstice is nigh (she said). With Leo on the ascendant, and a problematic 12th house, this time of year always comes as a kind of relief to me, a psychological blossoming as well as a literal one.
I will also make two more masks. The elastic I ordered back in March finally arrived. These two will be birthday gifts for a Cancerian friend who is coming over tomorrow to write POSTCARDS to Florida with me. If she’s lucky, I’ll use some of the batiks that Tina sent me.
They say the postcards make a difference, but what do I know? What do any of us know?
In the category of things that surely don’t make a difference but that make ME feel better: this week I sent a postcard to the White House, saying, “You’re Fired!” as part of a campaign to get millions of people buying stamps because — you know — ahem, absentee ballots, the Constitution, the USPS, Jeff Bezos.
I also made a complaint to the Virginia Bar about William Barr (OK impeachment might be out of the question, but can’t somebody disbar the fucker?)
Since this blog is PATTERN and outrage, here’s some noodling from this week, done in anticipation of some hot pink threads from Deb (due to arrive any minute).
P.S. Don’t give to the Minnesota Freedom Fund as I recommended a bit ago — they’ve been SWAMPED by donations! A wonderful problem for them. Also in case you don’t know, don’t give to anything Shaun King is rustling up. He’s reviled by many of the Black woman I follow on Twitter.
PPS. I do not mean to hassle those who are taking time to absorb things and order their thinking and staying quiet. I can’t tell you how tentatively I posted our Hearts for Charleston quilt on Instagram yesterday, it being the 5th anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME massacre.
Please keep your posts coming you have given me insights into so many people places and things that I know have helped me grow in my thinking of past and present situations that otherwise I would have stayed ignorant in more than I care to admit. Mostly I’m grateful for your suggestions to books that I know otherwise I would not of read.
Thank you and yes pass on the batik masks .. I would love that.
isabel wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns
A fantastic resource and for those who don’t necessarily love to read history it’s worth noting that this is called “narrative non-fiction.” History very much told through the lens of a few people’s’ stories. Before I read this book I knew nothing about the Great Migration. Perhaps a little like how, until this week, many Americans had not heard about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921.
I had no knowledge of Juneteenth and on the news tonight I learned – for the first time- of the Tulsa Massacre. I feel rather under- educated this evening. And history was a favorite subject. And to choose this day, this week, this city for a rally???? Which of his advisors did that- for sure it wasn’t he who should not be President. That little Nazi (wannabe) he has working for him- I have forgotten his name?
Learned about it in The Case for Reparations many years ago (link on sidebar). I also learned in that article about how pernicious red lining was. Basically screwing an entire generation of entree to the middle class. The Tulsa massacre came to more general consciousness with the HBO series, The Watchmen (also highly recommend).
I totally agree with Tina, especially in regarding books. I sometimes wished you had a separate page or tab on recommended reading! I put Grace’s suggestion in my ‘cart’ 🙂
A book tab is a great idea.
The Warmth or Other Suns is long. There’s an audio version out there, just so you know. I think it takes 19 hours — but could be listened to while driving or walking.
Not a white woman but for whatever that disclaimer may be worth I *am* a huge admire of bell hooks. Picked up a few of hers that I haven’t read. Also got Farming While Black.
Thank you for the reminder. I read her in college and think there’s at least one book on my shelf. I’ve been revisiting the poems of Audre Lorde.
i didn’t know about Wilkerson’s book till i listened to…of course….another OnBeing Podcast today. As i listened, several things DAWNED on me. How the Blank in history
about the span of time from abolition all through the ensuing years of the growing
prosperity of systemic white supremacy grew. Reading how Amerika Grew, again, the filter of White Eyes. It’s White history. with some references.
I thought about the racist that my father was, the complicit “i’m not like that” mother i had,
what my paternal grandparents and other generations before them would have been like.
I was suddenly feeling a real NEED, a HUNGER to read the history presented by her book because
it would explain to ME about my origins. explain on a whole other level the Thing of the Care and Feeding of a Supremely WhiteSociety. am really looking forward to reading this.
have you written about this book? and if so, can you reference the post?
https://deemallon.com/2018/01/04/here-it-comes/
https://deemallon.com/2018/02/16/hold-the-sugar/
I hesitate to share these two posts because they’re only really passing references I remember reading two memoirs after Wilkerson’s book, both of which deepened my awareness of the Great Migration. One was Jacqueline Woodson’s “Another Brooklyn” — her family went from South Carolina to NYC and the other was by then US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith. That one, called “Ordinary Light,” showed her family’s migration to California. Also from SC, I think.
I think you have more than earned a place at the table. You are a whirlwind and I’d hate to be your enemy dear Dee of the unminced word and always worthy sentiment. You are not on FB, but this posting deserves you attention: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisJustice/videos/581677589441619/ – Also FYI this NYTimes explanation of the issues involved https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/us/politics/police-reform-bill.html?fbclid=IwAR3GgwkZwuxQP20FNvDLftvPg-XoySmMxCaSvRipMLQMo64EX63PgfRpQYY
Meanwhile…beautiful quilt, lovely roses and stirring collage.