Delia Douglas
“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.”
Audre Lorde (1984, p. 123)
Black History Month 2023 takes place in the shadows of the in-custody death of Nicous D’Andre Spring, a 21-year-old Black man who had been illegally detained in a Montreal jail in December 2022, and the January 2023 murder of Tyre Nichols, a young Black man who died in Memphis, TN following a “routine traffic stop” where he was beaten by 5 police officers, all of whom are Black. Mr. Nichols died of his injuries in hospital 3 days later.
We live in a present created by dispossession, genocide, enslavement, and ongoing settler colonial projects. We live these histories intimately, intensely, quietly, and at times grievously (lateral and internalized violence).
Their needless deaths remind me of the fact that we are all exposed to images, ideas, beliefs, and practices (e.g., white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, dis/ability, capitalism) which structure our institutions and shape our relationships to ourselves and each other. Simply put, we need not be racialized as white (for example) to reproduce settler colonialism and uphold anti-Blackness.
The fact that we are not encouraged and taught to see ourselves as equals and the fact that we are not encouraged and taught to see ourselves in each other are examples of the normalization of racism. That is the very definition of systemic racism.
I am thinking about Black life matters, Black liberation, and lateral violence – within and across diverse Black communities and beyond…I am thinking about radical resistance and bold solidarity…
In 2014 – 3 Black queer women – Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors – established the contemporary #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) movement – a sociopolitical and ethical demand for action against state sanctioned anti-Black terror and anti-Black racism. Garza, Tometi, and Cullors advanced an expansive lens that sheds light on the experiences of those who have frequently been excluded as contributors to social justice movements and victims of anti-Black violence, namely Black women and girls, Black folks who are disabled, gender non-conforming and those who identify as LGBTQIA+.
Black freedom struggles are as multifaceted and diverse as are Black folx.
The events of the past few years have not only exacerbated existing inequities, they have also laid bare how racism is a public health crisis.
Racism lowers life chances. Racism kills.
The enduring legacies of residential schools are revealed in the uncovering of the bodies of the 215 children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (and the thousands more graves identified since), the death of Joyce Echaquan, the murder of George Floyd, the rise in racism against people of East Asian descent, Islamophobia, and the death of Indigenous, Black, and racialized people in police involved shootings across Canada. These are not individual acts of racism, or the actions of a few bad apples – these are instances of systemic racism. These are acts that demonstrate how racism influences who lives and who dies.
This is not a zero-sum game – racism is not a competition to see who has endured the most harm – comparing ourselves to each other to construct hierarchy is itself is a form of violence. Lateral violence does just involve Black people, it occurs between members of different marginalized groups. Lateral violence also occurs when we don’t show up for each other – when we adopt the settler colonial strategy of divide and conquer…
Systemic racism requires a systemic response.
Solidarity requires courage. We cannot eradicate racial inequality and injustice unless we challenge the divisiveness of hierarchies of oppression and recognize the interconnectedness of systems of domination.
Bold solidarity is that which affirms and embraces the marginalized and excluded in our communities.
Movements such as Idle No More, #AmINext, #BLM, #Sayhername, #MeToo, and Dream Defenders make visible and affirm the lives of Indigenous and Black women and girls, 2SLGBTQQIA and those who live along the gender spectrum as targets of, and resistors to, oppression, creating space for the recognition of the humanity of all Indigenous and Black lives.
These are acts of radical resistance.
Our freedom struggles and futures intersect in complex and complicated ways owing to these histories of racial violence and their enduring legacies.
There is no time like the present to analyze our investments and allegiances and to commit ourselves to broadening our understanding of the diversity and complexity of Black identity and lived experience.
Consider this February/BHM as an opportunity to examine how anti-Blackness is manifest within ourselves and in within and across our various communities…
As political activist, scholar, and freedom fighter Angela Y. Davis asserts, “freedom is a constant struggle.”
…We…. can’t stop…We… won’t stop…
References
Cathy J. Cohen (1997). Punks, bulldaggers and welfare queens: The radical potential of queer politics. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3(4): 437-
465.
Angela Y. Davis. (2016). Freedom is a constant struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the foundations of a movement. Chicago, Il: Haymarket Books.
Alicia Garza (2014). A herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.” The Feminist Wire. Available at: https://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/.
Audre Lorde. (1984). Sister Outsider. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press
Robyn Maynard. (2017). Policing Black lives. Winnipeg, MB: Fernwood Publishing.