Originally delivered Aug. 16, 1967, at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. Transcript courtesy of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

Dr. Abernathy, our distinguished vice president, fellow delegates to this, the tenth annual session of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, my brothers and sisters from not only all over the South, but from all over the United States of America: ten years ago during the piercing chill of a January day and on the heels of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, a group of approximately one hundred Negro leaders from across the South assembled in this church and agreed on the need for an organization to be formed that could serve as a channel through which local protest organizations in the South could coordinate their protest activities. It was this meeting that gave birth to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

And when our organization was formed ten years ago, racial segregation was still a structured part of the architecture of southern society. Negroes with the pangs of hunger and the anguish of thirst were denied access to the average lunch counter. The downtown restaurants were still off-limits for the black man. Negroes, burdened with the fatigue of travel, were still barred from the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. Negro boys and girls in dire need of recreational activities were not allowed to inhale the fresh air of the big city parks. Negroes in desperate need of allowing their mental buckets to sink deep into the wells of knowledge were confronted with a firm “no” when they sought to use the city libraries. Ten years ago, legislative halls of the South were still ringing loud with such words as “interposition” and “nullification.” All types of conniving methods were still being used to keep the Negro from becoming a registered voter. A decade ago, not a single Negro entered the legislative chambers of the South except as a porter or a chauffeur. Ten years ago, all too many Negroes were still harried by day and haunted by night by a corroding sense of fear and a nagging sense of nobody-ness.

But things are different now. In assault after assault, we caused the sagging walls of segregation to come tumbling down. During this era the entire edifice of segregation was profoundly shaken. This is an accomplishment whose consequences are deeply felt by every southern Negro in his daily life. It is no longer possible to count the number of public establishments that are open to Negroes. Ten years ago, Negroes seemed almost invisible to the larger society, and the facts of their harsh lives were unknown to the majority of the nation. But today, civil rights is a dominating issue in every state, crowding the pages of the press and the daily conversation of white Americans. In this decade of change, the Negro stood up and confronted his oppressor. He faced the bullies and the guns, and the dogs and the tear gas. He put himself squarely before the vicious mobs and moved with strength and dignity toward them and decisively defeated them.  And the courage with which he confronted enraged mobs dissolved the stereotype of the grinning, submissive Uncle Tom.  He came out of his struggle integrated only slightly in the external society, but powerfully integrated within. This was a victory that had to precede all other gains.

In short, over the last ten years the Negro decided to straighten his back up, realizing that a man cannot ride your back unless it is bent. We made our government write new laws to alter some of the cruelest injustices that affected us. We made an indifferent and unconcerned nation rise from lethargy and subpoenaed its conscience to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights. We gained manhood in the nation that had always called us “boy.” It would be hypocritical indeed if I allowed modesty to forbid my saying that SCLC stood at the forefront of all of the watershed movements that brought these monumental changes in the South. For this, we can feel a legitimate pride. But in spite of a decade of significant progress, the problem is far from solved. The deep rumbling of discontent in our cities is indicative of the fact that the plant of freedom has grown only a bud and not yet a flower.

And before discussing the awesome responsibilities that we face in the days ahead, let us take an inventory of our programmatic action and activities over the past year. Last year as we met in Jackson, Mississippi, we were painfully aware of the struggle of our brothers in Grenada, Mississippi. After living for a hundred or more years under the yoke of total segregation, the Negro citizens of this northern Delta hamlet banded together in nonviolent warfare against racial discrimination under the leadership of our affiliate chapter and organization there. The fact of this non-destructive rebellion was as spectacular as were its results. In a few short weeks the Grenada County Movement challenged every aspect of the society’s exploitative life. Stores which denied employment were boycotted; voter registration increased by thousands. We can never forget the courageous action of the people of Grenada who moved our nation and its federal courts to powerful action in behalf of school integration, giving Grenada one of the most integrated school systems in America. The battle is far from over, but the black people of Grenada have achieved forty of fifty-three demands through their persistent nonviolent efforts.

Slowly but surely, our southern affiliates continued their building and organizing. Seventy-nine counties conducted voter registration drives, while double that number carried on political education and get-out-the-vote efforts. In spite of press opinions, our staff is still overwhelmingly a southern-based staff. One hundred and five persons have worked across the South under the direction of Hosea Williams. What used to be primarily a voter registration staff is actually a multifaceted program dealing with the total life of the community, from farm cooperatives, business development, tutorials, credit unions, etcetera. Especially to be commended are those ninety-nine communities and their staffs which maintain regular mass meetings throughout the year.

Our Citizenship Education Program continues to lay the solid foundation of adult education and community organization upon which all social change must ultimately rest. This year, five hundred local leaders received training at Dorchester and ten community centers through our Citizenship Education Program. They were trained in literacy, consumer education, planned parenthood, and many other things. And this program, so ably directed by Mrs. Dorothy Cotton, Mrs. Septima Clark, and their staff of eight persons, continues to cover ten southern states. Our auxiliary feature of C.E.P. is the aid which they have given to poor communities, poor counties in receiving and establishing O.E.O. projects. With the competent professional guidance of our marvelous staff member, Miss Mew Soong-Li, Lowndes and Wilcox counties in Alabama have pioneered in developing outstanding poverty programs totally controlled and operated by residents of the area.

Perhaps the area of greatest concentration of my efforts has been in the cities of Chicago and Cleveland. Chicago has been a wonderful proving ground for our work in the North. There have been no earth-shaking victories, but neither has there been failure. Our open housing marches, which finally brought about an agreement which actually calls the power structure of Chicago to capitulate to the civil rights movement, these marches and the agreement have finally begun to pay off. After the season of delay around election periods, the Leadership Conference, organized to meet our demands for an open city, has finally begun to implement the programs agreed to last summer.

But this is not the most important aspect of our work. As a result of our tenant union organizing, we have begun a four million dollar rehabilitation project, which will renovate deteriorating buildings and allow their tenants the opportunity to own their own homes. This pilot project was the inspiration for the new home ownership bill, which Senator Percy introduced in Congress only recently.

The most dramatic success in Chicago has been Operation Breadbasket. Through Operation Breadbasket we have now achieved for the Negro community of Chicago more than twenty-two hundred new jobs with an income of approximately eighteen million dollars a year, new income to the Negro community. But not only have we gotten jobs through Operation Breadbasket in Chicago; there was another area through this economic program, and that was the development of financial institutions which were controlled by Negroes and which were sensitive to problems of economic deprivation of the Negro community. The two banks in Chicago that were interested in helping Negro businessmen were largely unable to loan much because of limited assets. Hi-Lo, one of the chain stores in Chicago, agreed to maintain substantial accounts in the two banks, thus increasing their ability to serve the needs of the Negro community. And I can say to you today that as a result of Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, both of these Negro-operated banks have now more than double their assets, and this has been done in less than a year by the work of Operation Breadbasket.

In addition, the ministers learned that Negro scavengers had been deprived of significant accounts in the ghetto. Whites controlled even the garbage of Negroes. Consequently, the chain stores agreed to contract with Negro scavengers to service at least the stores in Negro areas. Negro insect and rodent exterminators, as well as janitorial services, were likewise excluded from major contracts with chain stores. The chain stores also agreed to utilize these services. It also became apparent that chain stores advertised only rarely in Negro-owned community newspapers. This area of neglect was also negotiated, giving community newspapers regular, substantial accounts. And finally, the ministers found that Negro contractors, from painters to masons, from electricians to excavators, had also been forced to remain small by the monopolies of white contractors. Breadbasket negotiated agreements on new construction and rehabilitation work for the chain stores. These several interrelated aspects of economic development, all based on the power of organized consumers, hold great possibilities for dealing with the problems of Negroes in other northern cities. The kinds of requests made by Breadbasket in Chicago can be made not only of chain stores, but of almost any major industry in any city in the country.

And so Operation Breadbasket has a very simple program, but a powerful one. It simply says, “If you respect my dollar, you must respect my person.” It simply says that we will no longer spend our money where we can not get substantial jobs.

In Cleveland, Ohio, a group of ministers have formed an Operation Breadbasket through our program there and have moved against a major dairy company. Their requests include jobs, advertising in Negro newspapers, and depositing funds in Negro financial institutions. This effort resulted in something marvelous. I went to Cleveland just last week to sign the agreement with Sealtest. We went to get the facts about their employment; we discovered that they had 442 employees and only forty-three were Negroes, yet the Negro population of Cleveland is thirty-five percent of the total population. They refused to give us all of the information that we requested, and we said in substance, “Mr. Sealtest, we’re sorry. We aren’t going to burn your store down. We aren’t going to throw any bricks in the window. But we are going to put picket signs around and we are going to put leaflets out and we are going to our pulpits and tell them not to sell Sealtest products, and not to purchase Sealtest products.”

We did that. We went through the churches. Reverend Dr. Hoover, who pastors the largest church in Cleveland, who’s here today, and all of the ministers got together and got behind this program. We went to every store in the ghetto and said, “You must take Sealtest products off of your counters. If not, we’re going to boycott your whole store.” A&P refused. We put picket lines around A&P; they have a hundred and some stores in Cleveland, and we picketed A&P and closed down eighteen of them in one day. Nobody went in A&P. The next day Mr. A&P was calling on us, and Bob Brown, who is here on our board and who is a public relations man representing a number of firms, came in. They called him in because he worked for A&P, also; and they didn’t know he worked for us, too. Bob Brown sat down with A&P, and he said, they said, “Now, Mr. Brown, what would you advise us to do.” He said, “I would advise you to take Sealtest products off of all of your counters.” A&P agreed next day not only to take Sealtest products off of the counters in the ghetto, but off of the counters of every A&P store in Cleveland, and they said to Sealtest, “If you don’t reach an agreement with SCLC and Operation Breadbasket, we will take Sealtest products off of every A&P store in the state of Ohio.”

The next day, the next day the Sealtest people were talking nice, they were very humble. And I am proud to say that I went to Cleveland just last Tuesday, and I sat down with the Sealtest people and some seventy ministers from Cleveland, and we signed the agreement. This effort resulted in a number of jobs, which will bring almost five hundred thousand dollars of new income to the Negro community a year. We also said to Sealtest, “The problem that we face is that the ghetto is a domestic colony that’s constantly drained without being replenished. And you are always telling us to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, and yet we are being robbed every day. Put something back in the ghetto.” So along with our demand for jobs, we said, “We also demand that you put money in the Negro savings and loan association and that you take ads, advertise, in the Cleveland Call & Post, the Negro newspaper.” So along with the new jobs, Sealtest has now deposited thousands of dollars in the Negro bank of Cleveland and has already started taking ads in the Negro newspaper in that city. This is the power of Operation Breadbasket.

Now, for fear that you may feel that it’s limited to Chicago and Cleveland, let me say to you that we’ve gotten even more than that. In Atlanta, Georgia, Breadbasket has been equally successful in the South. Here the emphasis has been divided between governmental employment and private industry. And while I do not have time to go into the details, I want to commend the men who have been working with it here: the Reverend Bennett, the Reverend Joe Boone, the Reverend J. C. Ward, Reverend Dorsey, Reverend Greer, and I could go on down the line, and they have stood up along with all of the other ministers. But here is the story that’s not printed in the newspapers in Atlanta: as a result of Operation Breadbasket, over the last three years, we have added about twenty-five million dollars of new income to the Negro community every year.

Now as you know, Operation Breadbasket has now gone national in the sense that we had a national conference in Chicago and agreed to launch a nationwide program, which you will hear more about.

Finally, SCLC has entered the field of housing. Under the leadership of attorney James Robinson, we have already contracted to build 152 units of low-income housing with apartments for the elderly on a choice downtown Atlanta site under the sponsorship of Ebenezer Baptist Church. This is the first project [applause], this is the first project of a proposed southwide Housing Development Corporation which we hope to develop in conjunction with SCLC, and through this corporation we hope to build housing from Mississippi to North Carolina using Negro workmen, Negro architects, Negro attorneys, and Negro financial institutions throughout. And it is our feeling that in the next two or three years, we can build right here in the South forty million dollars worth of new housing for Negroes, and with millions and millions of dollars in income coming to the Negro community.

Now there are many other things that I could tell you, but time is passing. This, in short, is an account of SCLC’s work over the last year. It is a record of which we can all be proud.

With all the struggle and all the achievements, we must face the fact, however, that the Negro still lives in the basement of the Great Society. He is still at the bottom, despite the few who have penetrated to slightly higher levels. Even where the door has been forced partially open, mobility for the Negro is still sharply restricted. There is often no bottom at which to start, and when there is there’s almost no room at the top. In consequence, Negroes are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society. They are too poor even to rise with the society, too impoverished by the ages to be able to ascend by using their own resources. And the Negro did not do this himself; it was done to him. For more than half of his American history, he was enslaved. Yet, he built the spanning bridges and the grand mansions, the sturdy docks and stout factories of the South. His unpaid labor made cotton “King” and established America as a significant nation in international commerce. Even after his release from chattel slavery, the nation grew over him, submerging him. It became the richest, most powerful society in the history of man, but it left the Negro far behind.

And so we still have a long, long way to go before we reach the promised land of freedom. Yes, we have left the dusty soils of Egypt, and we have crossed a Red Sea that had for years been hardened by a long and piercing winter of massive resistance, but before we reach the majestic shores of the promised land, there will still be gigantic mountains of opposition ahead and prodigious hilltops of injustice. We still need some Paul Revere of conscience to alert every hamlet and every village of America that revolution is still at hand. Yes, we need a chart; we need a compass; indeed, we need some North Star to guide us into a future shrouded with impenetrable uncertainties.

Now, in order to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student than the white schools. One-twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, seventy-five percent hold menial jobs. This is where we are.

Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.

Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget’s Thesaurus there are some 120 synonyms for blackness and at least sixty of them are offensive, such words as blot, soot, grim, devil, and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity, and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is the “black sheep.” Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child sixty ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority. [applause] The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and strip him of his personhood is as old as the earliest history books and as contemporary as the morning’s newspaper.

To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation, no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, “I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents, and now I’m not ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” Yes, yes, we must stand up and say, “I’m black , but I’m black and beautiful.” This, this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.

Now another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in to economic and political power. Now no one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power, both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. Now the problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power, a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now, power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say, ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.”

Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.

You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.

Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best, power at its best is love, implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on.

Now what has happened is that we’ve had it wrong and mixed up in our country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power, and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program— and I can’t stay on this long— that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold: We must create full employment, or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In 1879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:

The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the, that of a taskmaster or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.

Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor, transformed into purchasers, will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.

Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.

Now, let me rush on to say we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. And I want to stress this. The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots. Now, yesterday, I tried to analyze the riots and deal with the causes for them. Today I want to give the other side. There is something painfully sad about a riot. One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against impossible odds. And deep down within them, you perceive a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing.

Occasionally, Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts riot and the other riots in various cities represented effective civil rights action. But those who express this view always end up with stumbling words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result. At best, the riots have produced a little additional anti-poverty money allotted by frightened government officials and a few water sprinklers to cool the children of the ghettos. It is something like improving the food in the prison while the people remain securely incarcerated behind bars. Nowhere have the riots won any concrete improvement such as have the organized protest demonstrations.

And when one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard, and finally, the army to call on, all of which are predominantly white. Furthermore, few, if any, violent revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of the non-resisting majority. Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him and up in the hills, but he would have never overthrown the Batista regime unless he had had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people. It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves.

This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don’t solve, answers that don’t answer, and explanations that don’t explain.

And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. And I am still convinced, and I’m still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country.

And the other thing is, I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate, myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities, and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history’s greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I’m trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here?” that we must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds water?” These are words that must be said.

Now, don’t think you have me in a bind today. I’m not talking about communism. What I’m talking about is far beyond communism. My inspiration didn’t come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn’t come from Engels; my inspiration didn’t come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn’t come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn’t follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called “dialectical materialism.” I have to reject that.

What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social.  And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

And if you will let me be a preacher just a little bit.  One day, one night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down on the kind of isolated approach of what you shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic: that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down on one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.”

In other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!”

And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.

Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.

Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.

Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.

Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God.

Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.

Let us be dissatisfied, and men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.

Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!” when nobody will shout, “Black Power!” but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.

And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation from the words so nobly left by that great black bard, who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way
That with tears has been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.

Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.

Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow, with a cosmic past tense, “We have overcome! We have overcome! Deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”

Martin Luther King – Where Do We Go From Here? (Conclusion) from MLK Speeches on Vimeo.

Like, late night I’m on a first class flight
The only brother in sight the flight attendant catch fright
I sit down in my seat, 2C
She approach officially talkin about, “Excuse me”
Her lips curl up into a tight space
Cause she don’t believe that I’m in the right place
Showed her my boarding pass, and then she sort of gasped
All embarrassed put an extra lime on my water glass
An hour later here she comes by walkin past
“I hate to be a pest but my son would love your autograph”
(Wowwww.. Mr. Nigga I love you, I have all your albums!..) [...]

For us especially, us most especially
A Mr Nigga VIP jail cell just for me
“If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake”
Just got some shoe-polish, painted my face
They say they want you successful, but then they make it stressful
You start keepin pace, they start changin up the tempo

—”Mr. Nigga,” Mos Def featuring Q-Tip

Recently, I was invited to speak at a major feminist event.

It was for a cause I cared deeply about, and I would share the stage with some of the best recognized figures in feminism.

And yet…I hesitated.

Less than three years ago, I would have jumped at this opportunity, delighted to be invited, honored to be included, proud to make my contribution. But that was then.

Now, I read the email with a healthy dose of suspicion.  Why did they want to invite me? They mentioned receiving my name on referral from another marquee named feminist, which made me wonder why the referral was needed.  Did they really need more speakers at this late date? Or did they need to add some color to yet another stage that was sure to be full of white women?

I also instantly felt guilty.  Was I projecting? Over reacting? After all, this was a short notice event. Isn’t the cause more important than my waffling feelings about mainstream, movement oriented feminism? Why was I instantly suspicious of their intent? Can’t I give people the benefit of the doubt for once?

The emotional see-saw over my decisions to participate in feminist focused events has been my constant companion for close to a year or so now, but it took on a new dimension when Jessica Valenti decided to leave Feministing.  That night, I was at a cocktail meetup, when one of my friends grabbed my hand and asked if I heard the news.  I’m a lot more removed from the blogosphere at large these days (our transformation is all consuming at the moment) so I hadn’t seen or heard about the post.  My friend, who is another African American woman, told me to take a look as soon as I got home.  “Basically,” she said, “it was all about her this whole time -she got hers so fuck us!”

So Jessica Valenti’s official departure from Feministing (and Renee’s subsequent response) is why I was actually spurred to write this post, but the problem goes back far longer than just that.

Before we begin, I would like to separate the issue as it stands – representation in mainstream, funded, capital F Feminism, from Jessica Valenti.  It is a bit difficult to do this – after all, Jessica’s site boasts that she was tagged the “poster girl for third-wave feminism” by Salon. To become a symbol of a movement (intentionally or unintentionally) means to also absorb all of the baggage that comes along with being held up as the symbol. And oh, there is baggage.

First, the idea that the third wave has mastered inclusion problems is sadly mistaken, since many of us surfing this new wave still see the rehashing that happens time and time again of second wave and first wave problems. However, it is absolutely amazing how often we see the same problems repeat themselves time and time again – particularly in the blogosphere.

Second, the idea that any one of us can represent the many is inherently flawed. It doesn’t matter who we’re talking about – no one can fully represent the whole of who we are and our varied thoughts and feelings. The trouble is that our current system requires exactly that – certain groups, in order to access a seat at the table, a representative will be assigned. Some folks would call that an attempt at diversity – but it is a nefarious double bind for those of us who get the nod. To refuse to participate may mean that voice is never represented, that the voices are the underrepresented are once again unvoiced, unheard, and perhaps unknown. Unfortunately, absence can be interpreted as a reinforcement of the status quo – if women of color are not present, then the uniformed interpret this to mean we have nothing to say. Or, even worse, it is a reinforcement that critical feminist theorists of color do not exist.

However, to accept the position also means to be pressed into the token spot. To often be the only person versed in issues pertinent to women of color. To have to change what you want to say or do or talk or think about because someone else on the panel just said something so egregious (and something quietly accepted as truth) that you know have to challenge their fucked up worldview.

So, to that end I wanted to share some stories from my life being sporadically dropped into feminist circles and what I have observed there. My hope is that because I’ve accrued some (read: precious little) currency in mainstream circles, that people will seriously reflect on the feminist status quo and recognize the way in which this space encourages tokenization and exploitation.

A Ms. Nigga VIP Panel Spot, Just for me!

I get asked to be on a lot of panels. Normally, being on a panel is a great way to attend a kick ass conference for free. So when I was first starting out, was thrilled to jump on a panel. Exposure, great networking – what’s not to like?

Now, dozens of panels later, I read every panel invitation as if I were trying to break The Da Vinci code. That practice started when I was on a panel a few years back. I had been invited to sit on a panel about women and media, and I thought they asked me to come to represent the digital sector. And perhaps the organizers did. But one of my co-panelists decided she was going to talk about how women didn’t recognize how good we had it. Everytime a panelist or audience member brought up a barrier to women in the industry, she responded by talking about how many gains women had made.

Finally I spoke up. “You said things are so much better for women- but you are only talking about white women. Outside of Oprah, where’s our progress, on or off screen?”

Not only did this woman not answer my question, she acted as if I had called her a racist. For some reason, she felt the need to inform the room about how she attends vibrant multicultural celebrations in her hometown that “celebrate differences.”

Now, what the fuck did that have to do with me pointing out that she had erased the experiences of women of color in the entertainment industry in all of her responses? Nothing. But I don’t think she was responding to my question – she was responding to my tokenized presence in that environment. It was instant defense mode – “let me prove how not racist I am,” not “let’s examine the disparity that exists when one says women and really means white women.”

Earlier this year, I opted to join a feminist media luncheon. I accepted and planned out my statements – I really wanted to stress the opportunities in the new media space, and encourage the young women to branch out from standard “feminist” conversations and instead go into other types of spaces and apply feminist concepts to the general threads there.

And the beginning of the conversation went well. However the third panelist, who arrived a bit later, started changing the tone of the conversation. It isn’t that this speaker intentionally set out to minimize the experiences of anyone who isn’t in line with the mainstream version of feminism – but her second-wave swagger and broad sweeping statements had the same effect.

Then I found myself at a crossroads – do I start talking about what I intended to and let her statements go unchallenged? Or do I once again have to represent for folks who aren’t in the room, to people who would most likely repeat the mistakes of their fore-mothers because they never learned anything different?

So once again, I swallowed what I wanted to say and instead talked about race, class, and structural injustice.

I felt like I had to take the loss for the greater good of team POC.  Why? Because tokens are inherently disempowered, no matter how much we want things to be different. To not represent is equally as painful as the knowledge that I am silencing myself when I do so. But these are the terrible choices we are forced to endure when people are willing to accept tokens in lieu of equity.

The Price We All Pay

Occasionally, we’ve run pieces about the cost of racism on Racialicious, many cross posted from our friends at Resist Racism.  One of my favorites, “The Cost of Racism” talks about how white supremacy has convinced itself of its own correctness (emphasis mine):

White people are raised in an environment in which they are regularly assured of their superiority. Their experts are white, like them. And they often live in segregation, thus denying them the opportunity to be exposed to other viewpoints.

What happens in a culture of white supremacy? White people assume that they are the experts. Even in the absence of any history, education or knowledge.

The most blatant example of this is when a white person (typically a white man) is pontificating about a subject and is challenged when a person of color expresses an opinion.  The white person will assume that the person of color knows nothing about the subject and will strive to “correct” him or her.  I’ve had this happen when a white person who was not in my field was speaking with authority about something in my field.  They never assume that you might actually be knowledgeable on the subject, nor do they assume that you might have professional credentials.  (I’d also note that this is a very common experience on the part of people of color.  And I recently heard a anecdote about this happening to a writer of color with a white man who was discussing her book.  Only he didn’t know she had written it.)

It does not cross their minds.  This is racism. [...]

When people are not regularly exposed to alternative viewpoints, and when other viewpoints are not carefully considered but instead immediately discounted, the end result is a people who lack the ability to think critically. Because they never learned to consider all the evidence.  They learned only who they need to listen to.

And it is this that we bump up against, time and time again.

Here’s another story.  I get an email from a writer who wants to quote me in a piece for an international newspaper about misogyny and hip-hop. This person stresses what a good opportunity for exposure this would be for me and my blog.  This person does not mention the extensive writing I’ve done on hip-hop, feminism, and everything in between.  This person did not appear to notice that I had already written extensively about the song and video in question.  Hell, this person didn’t appear to realize that I had already written extensively for the same international newspaper they were writing for, across a couple different sections.

So I ignored the email (which is easy for me to do, since I get about an email a minute most days).  But this person persisted, and emailed the person who referred me to ask for a proper introduction. In the magazine writing world, one of the first things you learn is that introductions are golden – here is a trusted person emailing someone you want to get in touch with saying “Hey, can you take the time to talk to this person?”  Why the initial offer was refused is beyond me.

But, the referral person sent me the whole email chain from this writer. And the writer’s initial email was to the referral, with a nice gushy line about their work and how they admired them, and would they please consider commenting. The referral noted she was not the best person to answer this question, and sent that person on to me.

The person who referred me is a white, well-known feminist that does NOT write about hip-hop. She’s a generalist, and she writes about a bit of everything.  Which brings me back to Resistance’s point above: why, if one is writing about hip hop and misogyny, would you go to a generalist, rather than an expert?

Why would you seek the opinion of someone who rarely, if ever writes about hip hop on a piece about hip hop? This person didn’t need to quote me as an expert.  They could have quoted Renina. Or any of the Crunk Feminists.  Or the R.N. Bradley, the Red Clay Scholar. Or any of the ladies at Clutch. Or Tricia Rose. Or Elizabeth Mendez Berry. Or Joan Morgan. Or Gwyndolyn Pough. Or look at men who identify as feminist or do feminist work – what about Byron Hurt who created a whole documentary on hip-hop and gender? What about Mark Anthony Neal? Need someone more well known? What about Melissa Harris-Perry?

Or, if this person is such a huge fan of mainstream feminism, why not reach out to the ladies at Feministing.com, the largest feminist hub in the blogosphere, and holler at Samhita, who is a hip hop head AND has the high profile position of Executive Editor? Why not Rose, who has also written extensively about hip-hop? And these are just the folks I can think of off the top of my head.

It’s the invisibility that burns. Amazing writing from all kinds of people is only a search box  away – yet, since we are not filed under “listen to,” we are ignored. And we are ignored in favor of people who will admit to not being experts on the topic or not having certain types of experiences.  This is when we start moving into erasure territory.  It isn’t that we are not out there, putting work into the public consciousness.  It’s that our words don’t count until they fall from the lips of a white girl.

I can only speak to my particular areas, which heavily focus on race and class.  But there are a lot of folks silenced because they don’t fit the profile La Lubu so helpfully outlines on Feministe:

“The feminist blogosphere is: young, but not too young (25-35); mostly white (and of northern european extraction); middle to upper-middle class; highly educated (always degreed, usually grad school or law degree); able-bodied and healthy; non-religious (but typically with a Protestant or Jewish background); childfree by choice (also not a caretaker of an elderly or disabled adult); body size from thin to very thin; cisgender; heterosexual; conventionally feminine/pretty; fashionable; not employed in a nontraditional (>25% female participation) workforce; native English speaking (family of origin usually native English speaking also); non-indigenous and several generations removed from immigrant ancestors; raised in a nuclear family (either intact or divorced—but not “unwed” or extended family); lives in a large metropolis; favors capitalism; unmarried/unpartnered (meaning: no formal or legal ties of responsibility to a partner); never incarcerated (no family incarcerated either); and has plenty of personal contact with people in positions of actual power (gets invited to policymaking meetings/summits).”

I hit a lot of these myself:  27 years old (started here when I was about 23 or 24), able bodied, childfree by choice, cisgender, heterosexual, native English speaking, large metropolis dwelling, neutral on capitalism, currently unmarried, never incarcerated, and recently, I discovered that I’ve been thrust into contact with a lot of people in positions of actual power.  But the other things, that I don’t fit?  They figure prominently into how others perceive me.

Much Ado About Book Deals

The term “book deal” has become short hand for a whole host of other things, most specifically how the words of some women are valued over others.  It’s also kind of seen as a low-level litmus test for “making it.”  If a person without a book deal criticized someone with a book deal, they would normally be tagged as “jealous,” angry that they don’t have one of these coveted agreements that vaults you into expert status. The other side of that criticism is more quiet, kind of a whisper, but it persists nonetheless: “If your writing was better, you would have a book deal too.”

So let’s talk about book deals, shall we?

I write in this space having contributed to two anthologies, multiple magazines, dozens of online outlets, and am about to pen my first foreward for a friend’s book about the Black Blogosphere. I am also delinquent in an academic chapter I owe to another friend about the Intersectional Internet. (If you’re reading, Doc Dre, I swear I’ll get it done, Jessica Yee as my 11th hour witness!)

The first time I was informed about the politics of book deals was 2008. The first time I was offered a book deal based on the Racialicious blog was also 2008 (and, to my knowledge, that offer still stands).  The first time I was introduced to a book agent was 2009, and the first time I was offered a personal book deal was 2010.

I still haven’t written a fucking book.

So, I say this to diffuse the she’s just jealous allegations by saying it outright – I could have a book deal, tomorrow, if I wanted and it would be on the shelves by winter. But I have not committed to a book yet.

This is partially due to (1) the politics surrounding book deals and (2) my complete and utter lack of interest in penning a memoir.

The latter reason should be fairly obvious to long time readers – I am very careful about revealing personal information about myself, and I would prefer to keep as much of my life as possible private.  Memoirs are super popular in the publishing world right now, so that’s what folks tend to push me toward.

The discussion of politics…well, let’s go back in time for a bit.

Back in 2008, I was a complete and total n00b, honored to attend my very first conference, Women, Action, and the Media.  It was the first time I had ever spoken on a panel before, so I was grateful to have Carmen steering the ship and Wendi Muse in the shotgun position.  Up until that point, we weren’t super involved in the feminist space – Carmen had been featured in Bitch Magazine and received a wave of (well-deserved) attention for her effortless discussion of race and gender issues.  Still, we were definitely the race kids invited to the gender party, so we didn’t really know what kind of space we stepped into.

And what I recall most about the time was how many friends we made.  Andi Ziesler and Lisa Jervis from Bitch Magazine introduced themselves – they proved to be great friends early on.  Bitch published my first (and favorite) magazine piece and Lisa Jervis floated my name in a lot of circles, which allowed me to rack out freelance credits later.  The most of the Feministing crew was there and they put on a fabulous dinner to promote their then new direction and site redesign.  I met tons of people, and everywhere, there was the feel of opportunity.  I remember being told, twice, to hit the after party after the evening’s official festivities close.  “Two people got book deals last year!” I was informed, though I appear to have forgotten who told me this.  No matter.

Since Carmen, Wendi, and I were also interested in caucusing with the Women of Color contingent at the conference (see this link), we ended up splitting our time between two events – the Feministing dinner and the QWOC and friends party, ultimately skipping the after party.  (This is a *really* abbreviated version of events, mind – I’m only telling the book deal centric bits of the story.)

That same day, Wendi and I had attended a pre-caucus lunch where we found out that a pretty awesome writer, Adele Nieves, had sat down with a publisher called Seal Press to pitch her idea for an anthology.  From what I can recall about the initial pitch, it was about bringing marginalized voices to the center of feminist discourse – a book on feminism without the usual suspects.  However, the person who sat down with her completely missed why such a book was needed, and informed Nieves that the book just wouldn’t sell without a brand name feminist, like Jessica Valenti.

So, then came the fallout. And much of the discussions afterward explained why the ideas of book deals became so central to a lot of these debates.

• There are issues of knowing the people involved, and friendship, and wanting to believe the best about your friend’s intentions. (See the comments for why that didn’t hold up.)
• Some issues, around the same time, about ideas, credit, plagiarism, and the co-opting the work of women of color (and with defensive response here)
• Other issues, around the same time, on women of color engaging in “negative discourse” (and drama around belatedly discovered racist images here)
• On the people being protected, and why it’s always the same old, same old
• Discussions on the unbearable whiteness of feminism
• Holly going hard on why “It’s a Jungle in Here Too” and her words, which prompted me to think along the same lines:

Just add my name to the list of those who are no longer sure if we can simply “take feminism back.” Or even if it’s worth it. It’s not like there aren’t other movements out there that actually respect women — that are led by women and folks of many other genders, that work to improve women’s lives. This exodus from single-issue politics has been happening for a long time. At the same time, I want to believe that change is possible. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I know mistakes are made, and I know mistakes can be repaired — even mistakes that highlight what I believe is the single worst problem inside of “the feminist movement” today.

• And another Holly sentiment, quoted for truth:

Look, we all have a problem here in the feminist blogosphere. I hope that all of you bloggers will agree with me on this problem: some feminist bloggers have access to a bigger megaphone than others, and you have to be deluded to think that’s based on anything remotely resembling a meritocracy. I’m sorry — no matter how talented you are, how good a writer, how intellectually sharp and beautifully passionate, there are other things about you that play a very significant role in how you’re heard, who hears you, whether you get heard at all. That is the tough shit about the ugly world we live in — it’s not truly fair to anyone, because true fairness would be getting evaluated solely on your own merits. Nobody is — but of course, some people get the long end of the stick, and others the short end. Others are marginalized. If you don’t get that, please go read some racism 101 somewhere, okay?

(It’s interesting to note – I miss Holly’s work. She left the feminist blogosphere – like many women on the losing side of many of these battles -  to focus on other, real world based projects.)

It really isn’t fun to dredge up all the things that went on, particularly as I’d rather not think about it for too long, but it is necessarily to do so.  Because people forget.  Time went on, and this thing I remember so well as a pivotal turning point in the feminist blogosphere is history.  Digital dust. Which is why Irin at Jezebel had no idea why so many people could see where Renee was going with her piece – all this back story was forgotten.

So it’s not about the book deal. It’s about all the issues tied up in it – access to power, marketability,  the transmission of ideas challenges, (perceived and otherwise) to mainstream norms – all kinds of things.  I hang in a lot of mainstream spaces, and I have figured out the formula that unlocks things like book deals and radio appearances and television appearances and speaking gigs.  So please believe, I know the game.  And despite the fact that some of us are able to make it, the deck is stacked. Over on Jezebel, someone inquired about why Jessica received a lot of criticism for her work, and Carmen and I received much much less for similar work.  After explaining that the race space is dramatically underfunded and underexposed when compared to feminism, I said:

While I have been blessed and honored to have many of the same opportunities as many of my white, female contemporaries, ultimately I am not the face people think of when they think feminism. I could probably eke out a living there, but only as second or third string. The stars tend to fit a certain mold. That’s not a diss on Jessica (it’s really hard to talk about these things when you actually know folks) but it’s kind of like trying to get a job as an actress. Yes, you can do it if you aren’t conventionally attractive and you can even have a fun, character driven career. But you aren’t getting the best opportunities or top billing or top dollar. The conversations around book deals and such sounds like professional sour grapes, but it is actually folks protesting a system that don’t see my words as valuable as Jessicas – for a thousand and one reasons from marketing to societal structures.

The internet is littered with reasons why so many WOC opt out (of the blogosphere format anyway) – hell, the feminism tag on Racialicious should really be named “feminist drama.” I poached Thea Lim and Jessica Yee away from a feminist mag for this bullshit.

I hate that this is resting on the feet of Jessica, because this problem didn’t begin with her and won’t end with her. But I can understand feeling some rage at seeing that pattern play out yet again.

My entire piece for Jessica Yee’s Feminism for Real was based in this internal conflict, and unfortunately, I haven’t arrived at a solution within myself. The event I referenced at the beginning of the piece? I declined. Over the weekend I accepted two panel invitations. One read:

We love the voice and leadership you bring to the feminist movement, and we hope you will join us to have a dynamic, smart, and rollicking good conversation with Gloria Steinem, that will rock people’s socks and challenge the notion that feminism is just about white women above a certain age.

For their sake, I hope they understand what they just asked for.

—

Want to Keep Reading?

Lisa Factora-Borchers – Accepting Kyriarchy, Not Apologies

Latoya Peterson – The Or vs. The And – Women of Color and Mainstream Feminism

Mai’a – We Don’t Need Another Anti-Racism 101

Our multi-talented homegirl Jessica Yee just edited and published her first anthology.  Called Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism, Yee and her contributors (including myself and Andrea Plaid) keep it raw by illuminating the some of the issues people of color (particularly Indigenous people) encounter when entering feminist spaces.  In honor of International Women’s Day, we are going to share short excerpts of some of the essays in the book.

Jessica Yee: “Introduction”

[W]e’re not really equal when we’re STILL supposed to uncritically and obediently cheer when white women are praised for winning “women’s rights,” and to painfully forget the Indigenous women and women of colour who were hurt in that same process.  We are not equal when in the name of “feminism” so-called “women’s only” spaces are created and get to police and regulate who is and isn’t a woman based on their interpretation of your body parts and gender presentation, and not your own. We are not equal when initatives to support gender equality have reverted yet again to “saving” people and making decisions for them, rather than supporting their right to self-determination, whether it’s engaging in sex work or wearing a niqab.  So when feminism itself has become it’s own form of oppression, what do we have to say about it? [...]

[I']ve lost count the amount of times I’ve been asked by others and asked the question myself, what is now the main title of this book, “But what is feminism, for real?”

The responses I received when putting this very question out there to create the book demonstrated resoundingly that people did want to talk about this notion of “the academic industrial complex of feminism” – the conflicts between what feminism means at school as opposed to at homer, the frustrations of trying to relate to definitions of feminism that will never fit no matter how much you try to change yourself to fit them, and the anger and frustration of changing a system while being in the system yourself.

Krysta Williams and Erin Konsmo: “Resistance to Indigenous Feminism”

E & K: What does it mean for an individual to be considered “liberated?”  What does it mean for indigenous communities to be “liberated?”  I think the pictures we think of as Native women are very different than the end goals expressed in a lot of feminist literature.  In other words, there needs to be more space given to community-based solutions and the hard work that everyone, especially women in our communities do every day.

In academia (and in general) there’s still the problem of tokenism.    Including one article or person of colour, or Indigenous person into feminist curriculum is not enough.  This needs to be fully integrated into all women’s studies curriculum (which is still inherently racist).

E: One crucial element that non-Indigenous academia needs to accept is that no matter how much you read the journals of Columbus, a Native Chief, or through interviews of Native people, you do not have the blood memory that we have within us.   Sorry, if this ruins your PhD on Native people but you don’t have the blood memory experiences that I do and so the internal “validity” of your research will never compare!

K: Internal validity has never been so literal…It also needs to be said that including folks after the fact just doesn’t cut it.  White supremacy exists within institutions and this can’t be changed  by just putting Indigenous bodies in chairs.  There are structural changes that we have been calling for since forever!

Shaunga Tagore: “A Slam on Feminism in Academia (poem)

your ideal graduate student is
someone who doesn’t have to experience community organizing
because you’ve already assigned them five chapters to read about it

your ideal graduate student is
someone who can’t talk about positionality or privilege
without referencing some article

your ideal graduate student is
rich enough
white enough
straight enough
able-bodied and -minded enough
to be given luxury of enjoying sitting in a corner reading 900 pages a week
(with their fair trade starbucks coffee in hand and their lulu lemon track pants on ass)

your ideal graduate student
IS NOT ME

so WHY did you let me through these doors in the first place
if you were just gonna turn around and shove me out?

to fill some quote for affirmative action?
to appear like a progressive program without putting in the effort of actually being one?

Latoya Peterson: The Feminist Existential Crisis (Dark Child Remix)

(If) I think (about gender, access, and equality), therefore I am (by definition, a feminist).

It should all be so simple, right? But in the immortal words of Lauryn Hill in “Ex-Factor:”

but you had to make it hard/loving you is like a battle/and we both end up with scars 

tell me who I have to be/to get some reciprocity

To accept an identity as a “professional” feminist is to accept the layers of baggage associated with the label feminist. Added to the class and race parcels I carry, I find myself changing into Erykah Badu’s metaphorical bag lady – even while I’m trying to let it go and let love heal some of these wounds. If I make my living unpacking racism and sexism, why willingly take on more?

But one thing is clear – the culture of professional feminism is crowding my space. [...]

Now, it’s always a different world than where you come from. But this was way different. It was wealthier, whiter, full of events and fetes and conferences. It was earnest. It was aware. But not too aware, since I always felt like I wore the cloak of the outsider. I’ve made a lot of wonderful friends through feminism, and got to meet so many more amazing women, and yet I always had this feeling that I still hadn’t quite landed where I was supposed to be. It was as if I was on this path, but it was leading away from where I was trying to go. Somehow, I always ended up feeling isolated.

Louis Esme Cruz: “Medicine Bundle of Contradictions: Female-man, Mi’kmaq/Acadian/Irish Diasporas, Invisible disAbilities, masculine-Feminist”

I write this to you, making something beautiful in this shared space between us, making it difficult for invasion to take root here. When we recognize each other, it is easier for both of us to relax.  We build what Lee Maracle, recognized Sto:lo author, describes as the golden rainbow between us.  Maracle says that when we build this arch, we are actively resisting invasion because no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. [...]

Two-Spirit people are not allowed to participate in societies as our full selves and then we are shamed and blamed for the ways we are hurt by this.  When people say that a space is “women-only” they are assuming that women are always sensitive to each other’s needs, are always able to understand each other’s experiences, these experiences are always the same, and women are not violent.  Explicitly, this says all women are safe; all men are unsafe.  The inclusion of Two-Spirit people in women only space is arbitrary, shifting with who has the power to define the space.  This person in power is rarely Native.  From what I have seen, women who parade feminist ideals are the ones who decide who experiences gender-oppression.  Two-Spirit people can talk about our oppression only when it parallels women’s experiences.   When our lives get too complicated we are judged, ignored, punished, humiliated.  Whether it’s women-only or men-only space, the naming of a space as only one gender encourages invasion and conquest because they don’t allow people to be the complex creatures we are.  This pushes Two-Spirit people to the margins simply because we are not one thing or another.  We need liberation from the confines of gender baggage, too.  This parallels the larger call from Indigenous sovereignty movements asking for our Native Nations to be seen as distinct, sovereign entities.  We are necessarily unique and complex for a reason.

Ghadeer M. (of the AQSAzine Collective): “A Rant: Ya si sayed”

Insecure about your power, hungry for more, you throw a fit, feet in the air and scream out loud hoping to drown out the voices of objections, questions, and inquiries.

Listen to me – no longer will you allow yourself to tell me what to do.  What to cover or not cover, what messages my body will carry for you.

Things are going to change around here.

And I know that you are afraid, and that your violence only foster because of shame of your own mistakes.

But so you should be…

Tremble and quiver from the thought of your cold fate approaching you.

Then sit still and surrender as chaos from soles rubbing on pavements and streets turn into rubble and settle lightly on the shoulders of your pride.

Alone and desolate…like all captured kings.

Dethrones, de-powered. Ropes cut through your throat.

You’ve lost.

Because I’m woman – and I do what I want.

 

Shabiki Crane: “Pride from Behind”

[...] I was truly “done” with women’s studies after my professor announced to the class that when white women like Britney Spears presented themselves in a sexual manner it was because they were asserting their sexuality; however when black women, like Beyonce did, they were simply being puppets and degrading themselves.  I couldn’t understand the way that both images wouldn’t invoke the same reaction regardless of whether it was seen as empowerment or degradation, but why not the same? I saw two women singing, shaking, shimmying and to my horror, recognized it would never be the same.  It just reiterated the feelings of dis-empowerment I had harboured throughout the years of my life.

Feminism dictates that women deserve to be equal to men; but the truth is it’s telling us that some women are more deserving than others.

Megan Lee: “Maybe I’m Not Class-Mobile; Maybe I’m Class-Queer”

The current model of “class-mobility” reinforces separatism and a class-hierarchy because it posits that in order to escape oppression, one must become an oppressor – and universities do not merely mediate the boundary between professional and laborer, they teach the body of knowledge, the worldview, the values that mark a person as professional, as “belonging” to the middle- or upper-class.

Universities teach us to renounce our sense of identification with the poor; they teach us this by mainly ignoring the existence of poor people  and by treating us as “other” when we do become the subject of discussion.  Universities teach us not to care too much, because it will undermine our professional role.   Universities teach that we are separate from where we came from, that we are “qualified” (which suggests our families and peers are not), that we are justified in having power over people, in speaking for the subjects of our study.  Universities teach us that we are “too good” to wait tables and clean houses, with the implication that those who do those jobs are “not good enough” to deserve better.

Poor people tend to see university as a way out for their kids, but university is also a way in to the class of people whose success is premised on the oppression of the poor.  [...]For a kid to become educated meant that he or she would live an easier life that was premised on the oppression and invisibility of the very communities s/he came from.  This left a foul taste in many mouths.

I have had that foul taste in my mouth for years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is the taste of injustice – of being forced to choose between the indignity of remaining poor and the ethically repellent strategy of privilege seeking.  To a poor kid who has the chance to go to college or university, participating in an institution that she identifies as oppressive (either before attending or in the course of her education) might seem like the best choice with regards to her survival, but it is a conflicted survival.

Andrea Plaid: ” ‘No, I Would Follow the Porn Star’s Advice’: A Case Study in Educational Privilege and Kyriarchy”

I could have easily benefited from the feminist-academic complex.  I concentrated on women’s studies as part of my liberal-arts degree and my Independent Study project when I was getting my master’s degree in library science – since writing a master’s thesis was not an option at the time – was on founding and operating a sex-positive library, though I did not specifically study sex as an undergraduate or graduate student.  The fact that I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree allows me to be taken slightly more seriously because they signal that I know certain “privilege codes and signals” gotten from about seven years of beyond high school education, like knowing about or having “the right” books on my bookshelf or in my e-reader (Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, anything and just about everything by bell hooks, some Barbara Ehrenreich and Naomi Klein, etc.), having seen or heard about the “right” movies (anything Pedro Almodovar and Mira Nair, Outfoxed, Matrix, etc.) and the “right” music (usually some form of “alternative” hip-hop, rock, and country).  It also means I know the “right” places to meet other like-minded educated people offline (coffee shops, poetry readings, film screenings, panel discussions, galleries and museums, and so on.) In other words, my stating that I’m degreed lets others know that I’m the kind of “culturedness” that only a bachelor’s and master’s degree “can give” (translation: “can pay for” – which, really, is what educational privilege is welded with and signals)…and if I wasn’t exposed to these things, I can damn sure learn it quickly because I know the “right” places to go find such things, including the “right” Internet sources and from those adjunct and tenured types.

The linchpin in all of this and what I’m signaling to others by my degrees is that I’m capable of talking about complex ideas and issues, like the various schools of feminism, because I’m trained to do it, based on the “virtue” of the “right” knowledge and furthermore, take my complex notions to “the masses” who need to hear it and embrace it as part of their lives.  (This notion is one of the rawest forms of educational privilege.) Because that, from what we’re told in these social-class incubators called four-year colleges and advanced degrees, is the great responsibility that comes from the great advantage – and promise – of being an “educated person.”  The more subtle lesson passed to us in college is The Degreed are the only ones worth listening to – the more degreed, the more you’re worth listening to, because you’re an “expert” due to all those years of studying.

Robyn Maynard: Fuck the Glass Ceiling!

[L]et’s examine [the word] ‘marginalization.’ I’ve always felt wary about the community sector’s use of the word ‘marginalized populations’, but I didn’t always understand why I felt it was so dubious.  Now I do: ‘exploitation has always been a better term that ‘marginalization’, because where marginalization just means that people are pushed into, or exist already in, the margins of society, it doesn’t explain how or why.  The process of marginalization isn’t intrinsic to the meaning of the word, and ‘margins’ seem to pre-exist, as a natural location for people to inhabit in a society,  It seems like something that just accidentally happens, and needs to be fixed by pulling people into some kind of imaginary ‘centre,’ which I imagine is meant to be the middle class or something to that effect.  It is a watered down description of the extreme hardships and daily violence experienced by those living in extreme poverty and facing the harshest realities of racism in our society, and it also disguises the reasons for why it takes place. [...]

The ever-decreasing ability for the poor, racialized, and Indigenous to access the basic food and shelter needs that ‘marginalize’ people is not addressed and ‘marginalization’ seems to be a phenomenon that just is. The word ‘exploitation’ is clearer. The process of exploitation is inside of this word, it contains, in its definition, the fact that somebody is being exploited for the benefit of somebody else; it is describing a relationship.  And this makes it easier to understand what is meant in stating that the status of racialized, Indigenous, and immigrant women today is ‘structural.’

 

Interested in reading the rest of the book? You can order Feminism for Real here.

By Guest Contributor Aaminah Al-Naksibendi, originally posted at Anishinaabekwe

Note from Cecilia, owner of Anishnaabekwe: This is a guest post by Aaminah Al-Naksibendi. She is a Michigander, mother, daughter, sister, artist, writer, activist, truth teller, rebel and NDN. I asked her to write a guest post because of my utter exhaustion around what happened to me this week. So I thank her with all my heart for helping me to speak and share this story when my voice is drenched in sorrow, depression and dealing with the effects of racism in the 21st century.

I grew up in Michigan, adopted by a white family. As a young girl I attended NDN pow wows, African American cultural festivals and the Hispanic festival in our West Michigan city. My parents attempted to raise us with multi-cultural friends, in multi-cultural public schools, and attending multi-cultural churches. As a woman, I had a long relationship with a fellow NDN who had gone to school with and remained friends with my brother. We had a son together before we separated.

When my son was about 7 months old, I started dating a Zhaganaash man whose family lived in Benzie County, up just north of Traverse City. For many reasons, I was not really liked by his overbearing mother, but we attempted to build bridges and visited up there several times before we married in December and his family refused to attend and cut communication with him.

Needless to say, those visits up north were very uncomfortable in many ways. But one thing that was especially difficult for me was the complete lack of color. My fiancée talked about wanting to move up north. We loved the wooded areas, the idea of living just outside a small town, and the literally Crystal-like water of the lake – cleanest water I have ever seen. But the idea of being surrounded by only white people made me really uncomfortable. I wasn’t Muslim at the time, and I am pale (and as a baby my son was blond and pale too) so I was able to “pass” as white and no one recognized us as NDN. I didn’t experience personal racial attacks while visiting (except by my fiancée’s mother of course) and out in the community, though there was one time when a shop keeper asked my fiancée “what” I was and he answered that I was Irish like him. I do also recall overhearing jokes about Blacks, “wetbacks”, and NDNs. Even so, my discomfort stemmed more from the complete lack of color, and not being able to imagine raising my son not only completely outside his own culture, but also without the benefit of a multi-cultural environment and amongst people who were clearly hostile to people of color.

There was one time, only one, where I saw any other color in that town. It was when a Black girl accompanied a white foster family who was visiting the town on vacation. We ran into them when we went to have lunch in a little burger shack near the lake. The little blonde children of the family were in bathing suits, and the Black girl was in sloppy cut off shorts and an oversized none-too-clean t-shirt. When the family’s number was called to pick up their food she got up to serve everyone. I didn’t hear the mother or father say that wasn’t necessary or even thank her, and they certainly weren’t jumping up to help. I lost my appetite and that was the day I declared there was no way I could live there. My fiancée insisted that since they were only visiting their cabin in the summer, that family didn’t represent the year-round residents, but I will never forget what it represented to me. Between that and his family, I never again was able to bring myself to visit.

When my NDN sister Cecelia told me about moving up north, my first thought was discomfort but of course I didn’t want to spoil her plans with my misgivings so instead I congratulated her. I wanted to believe that things have really changed in the last dozen years and there would be more color in the north. Certainly, I thought there must be other NDNs there! Cecelia wrote happily about communing with nature, getting in touch with silence, getting away from the gray and draining energy of the cities. I was happy for her.

Unfortunately, it didn’t surprise me then to hear that she quickly ran into issues when looking for work. Of course people can write it off as our bad economy, no one can find work right now, etc. But I sensed something else… I sensed that she also wasn’t finding a lot of support from the small NDN community there either. Finally she wrote to tell me she had accepted a position as a volunteer (with small stipend) with an organization. I thought volunteer work is better than no work anyway and at least she felt like she was contributing to her community.

Quickly that changed. Quickly it seemed that there were some “issues” at her job and that she was being routinely disrespected on the job. The funny thing is, people know that it is wrong to be discriminated against or spoken down to when they are a “professional” on the job. But I think that people figure that if you are “just” a volunteer then no one owes you professional respect and you could just leave if you don’t like how people treat you. Of course, a committed and professional person who cares about community-based organizations doesn’t see it that simply. It is a difficult choice to leave a job, whether it is paying or not. And so many of us have been taught to second-guess ourselves, to not trust our own instincts that something is racist or classist or otherwise damaging to us.

As women we are socialized in this society to turn off our instincts. Yet instinct is one of the first things that an NDN woman works to regain when she gets in touch with her culture. Instinct is a powerful and important tool that the Creator gifted women with. For women who are interested, as Cecelia is, in healing – not only herself but also her community and the earth – instinct is essential. But so many people of color have been told that our instinctual recognition of discrimination is wrong, that we are being paranoid or “playing the race card” to gain sympathy. So many of us instinctively feel that something is wrong and that it is related to our ethnic difference, but we attempt to give any other excuse for the situation and work thru it.

And there isn’t much talk (that I hear anyway) of how NDN women continue to be marginalized in this society. We are targeted for programs to sterilize us but cannot get access to an abortion by choice. We are rarely the group that is sought out, even in a tokenizing way, by organizations, task forces and other groups when they start looking for “minority representation”. And often we are simply erased from existence. As so many of us are “mixed” and span the spectrum of skin colors from whitest White to blackest Black, we have often been forced to “choose” a side and subsume our NDNness to the other “part” of us. For those of us who are on the paler end of the spectrum, we often find that fellow NDNs don’t accept us either, especially if we have been separated from our people and culture and are trying now to reconnect.

A little while ago Cecelia shared with me some misgivings about her job and the community she was in. She was having a hard time connecting with other NDNs. When she had accepted the job, the woman who was to be her supervisor had offered to help her settle in and get hooked up with other NDNs. But that promise was never actualized in any way. Now, there are different management styles, but on the job one does need basic guidance from a supervisor, and this supervisor didn’t given any direction. It is important for anyone in a supervisory role to be a leader, and that means that they have to have some relationship to those they are leading and provide an example of how they expect the job to be done. Also, seemingly little things started to pile up. Cecelia said that she’d send emails asking specific questions, seeking specific direction, specific community connections that would help not only her but also the people they were working with. But her emails went unanswered. She noticed that she was ignored, not spoken to in the office by that supervisor or spoken to as an afterthought. When she was spoken to, she felt rather patronized, like a “second class citizen”; the whole tone was different than how she witnessed others being spoken to. There were no specifically racist comments made directly about her, but loose comments about how “white bread” the area is in a tone that implied “you don’t fit, why are you here?”

This week I heard from Cecelia after she was called into the office of her supervisor. Cecelia shared with me that she had never felt so degraded, so disrespected, that it was even worse than the day-to-day poor treatment she had been experiencing. Her supervisor decided that she would henceforth need to submit to oversight of her job duties and supervisory meetings every other week to discuss her performance. In a paying job, that would be properly termed “a probationary period” and would come about after having received, in writing, some sort of complaint about performance. Cecelia had never been told, verbally or in writing, that there was any problem with her performance. In fact, she was never given any feedback or direction in regards to her job even though she pointedly requested it. As a volunteer, such oversight sounds excessive. To be clear, this was not a matter of a policy change that would affect all volunteers (of which there are two others). Even while being told that she would be subject to this level of new scrutiny, Cecelia was never given concrete examples of any way in which she was failing to carry out her job duties or doing so in an unacceptable or inefficient manner, nor was she given a concrete reason for the change. As far as she knows, she has been doing her job just fine and been given no reason to believe there were problems with her performance. But now she must submit to constant scrutiny and being spoken to as if she were an ignorant child, while other staff and volunteers witness her being called to the office.

Is it because Cecelia is the only NDN there? I trust Cecelia’s instincts. And I remember the general hostility of the area – an area that is almost exclusively liberal White racists that think we live in a “post-racial” society. I remember Cecelia sharing stories of how overt the staring and whispering was when obviously-of-color friends visited. I’ve also seen media showcasing open racism in Northern Michigan, in particular against NDNs. And I think that since she has been singled out for the treatment and treated in a paternalistic manner, it’s reasonable to assume that being NDN had something to do with it and that White privilege and power is at work. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they may be intentionally trying to run her out of town to preserve their communal privilege and “white bread” vision of utopia – sans color, sans NDNs.

Note: Much of this post is based on generalisations drawn from my own narrow experience. Any corrections to my observations are very welcome.

After three years of toiling in sphere of feminism, anti-racism, non-profits, community-based organisations, queer politics and environmentalism (…), last January I decided to go back to school to do my MFA in Creative Writing. This decision came with much hand-wringing and anxiety about whether or not I should keep on doing work that seemed to have some kind of concrete impact on the world around me, or if I should just throw in the towel and examine my belly button for three years. In the end the belly button won – I figured that in life, you gotta do what you love. Or at least you should spend three years here and there doing it.

But after coming to terms with my return to superbougiedom, I had another hurdle to consider. How was I going to manage in the world of mainstream creative writing? The only real exposure I’d had to collaborative creative writing was in workshops for people of colour. Or for women of colour. Or for queer women of colour.

In the end, like Bill on True Blood, I decided it would be good for me to go mainstream. After all, great literature is about being able to uncover what is universal in human experience – even as the universal is cushioned by very specific experiences. I figured it would be good for me to be able to write for people of colour, but in a way that was accessible to white folks; or at least not unnecessarily hostile towards the Dominant Culture. (Kinda like what we do here…)

And I have been pleasantly surprised. While my graduate program is mostly white dudes, there are still lots (read: more than one or two) other writers of colour. But more than that, I have been continually surprised and moved by my co-writers interest in, and openness to my point of view, even if it differs from theirs.

So where’s the problem?

It’s the reading list.

While everybody has heard of Junot Diaz and read at least one of his short stories, few people seem to have read The Brief Life of Oscar Wao, despite the fact that it won the Pulitzer the year I started my MFA. I have never heard mention of Jhumpa Lahiri or Sherman Alexie.  So far, I’ve only seen Toni Morrison turn up on reading lists for courses in African-American Lit. The Colour Purple is too polemical to be considered during an art-based discussion (I am told). When I mentioned Edwidge Danticat in a class (despite the fact that this is the most annoyingly well-read group of people I have ever come across) I was met with blank stares.

It’s not like Danticat, or any of these writers, are obscure. They have all been nominated for – or won! – the biggest prizes in American Lit. Most of them have placed on any “Important Writers” lists of the past ten years. Yet all the conversations I hear revolve solely around Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, David Foster Wallace, Tobias Wolff…

So what gives? It makes you feel kinda discouraged that people of colour can win every prize, but can’t get a mention in classes at one of the US’s top ranked MFA programs.  What’s the big deal, you might think.  POCs are not only getting published – they’re getting read, and they’re winning prizes? What’s to complain about?

To me it feels like writers of colour are being made homecoming queen, but never getting invited to a single party.  Lit of colour is celebrated in the awards circle, yet its continuing ghettoisation despite the prizes is puzzling and depressing.

Is the literary colour divide wider than we thought?

In conversation with Mat Johnson earlier this year, he told me that he likes teaching at VONA* because he feels that sometimes writers of colour don’t get as much out of creative writing workshops as their non-POC peers. This is because the level of critique they get from said peers is thin, Johnson says, with the justification that people are loathe to critique writing that describes an experience they themselves haven’t had.   I wonder how Johnson’s theory might apply to instructors.  Why don’t more white instructors teach writers of colour? Is it because it seems risky to teach stories about experiences on which white instructors are not experts?

Yet we talk all the time about things we’re not experts on.    I’ve heard MFA students deftly deconstruct stories about astronauts, imaginary animals & fantasy relationships with Che Guevara, yet white students are not able to overcome the anxiety of being too white.**  Once again race is the elephant in the room.  So much of the obstacle to useful conversations about race – in any setting – have to do with the fear of being caught out.

The only writer of colour who gets real mention is Haruki Murakami, and I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that he lives and writes in Japan. An uneducated guess is that he is safe to adore because he lives outside of the sticky rules of race in the US.

Even when instructors include writers of colour in their reading lists, discussions of these kinds of stories are usually a blip, and they hardly ever cross over into the realm of bar or coffee shop talk, where the real conversation takes place.

Maybe, as I suspected in the beginning, I’m looking in the wrong place if I want to see writers of colour given the same attention as white writers. But considering (again) that the power of literature is in its ability to cross boundaries, it’s a heartache.

In the meantime, enjoy this list of literature of colour that should get more mainstream play — beyond the awards.

Writers
James Alan McPherson
Lan Samantha Chang
Andrew Pham
Sheba Karim
Naeem Murr
Kiran Desai
Allen Russell Gee
Gish Jen
Yiyun Li
Karen Sheppard
Juan Felipe Herrara
Michael Ondaatje

Books
Ba Ninh, The Sorrow of War
Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones
Edward P. Jones, The Known World
Gayl Jones, White Rat and Healing
Paule Marshall, Brown Girl Brownstone
James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain & Another Country
Hari Kunzru, Transmission
Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children
Jessica Hagedorn, Dogeaters
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand
Chris Abani, Graceland
Danzy Senna, Caucasia
Ha Jin, Waiting

Poetry
Luis Omar Salinas, The Sadness of Days
Gary Soto, New and Selected Poems & The Effects of Knut Hamsun on a Fresno Boy

Thanks to Quincy, Janine and Will for their help!

–
* VONA is a yearly week-long workshop for writers of colour, taught by some of the best writers of colour in the country, including Junot Diaz, Suheir Hammad, Chris Abani, Elmaz Abinader and Mat Johnson.

**Or worse, white students are overconfident and happily appropriate the stories of folks of colour – without ever reading the stories POCs tell themselves.