I read. I read a lot. Most of what I read, right now, deals with race and ethnicity and women's issues. And what I've come to find, repeatedly, is that the language women use to describe their subjugation and humiliation at the hands of American male society (unfortunately generalized, of course) is very like the language I find echoed in the language POC (People of Color) use to describe their subjugation and humiliation at the hands of American white society. It serves to underscore that the nature of subjugation and humiliation, as experienced by human beings, is universal. It is just as damaging and devastating to the psyche, the soul, the future potential of each and every human being. However, there is a differential at play.
Take, for instance, this passage (edited for my purposes) from a powerful article written by KC Compton:
We have work to do and none of us can do it alone. The biggest difference that can be made for POC right now must come from white people. POC have said just about all they have to say about this for now. It’s time that white people take down whatever wall they’ve constructed between themselves and the words of POC and acknowledge the truth of their experience. I would hope that any POC's experience could potentially show that there are far fewer indifferent white people than indifferent in this world. It’s time for white people to step up in a huge, unambiguous way. We have to create a society that no longer tolerates the I see, I ignore and/or embrace, I perpetuate mentality. This society, this country should no longer bear up under the weight of this abusive, savage indifference and we must all acknowledge it now.
One could read this paragraph and say that I've heavily edited it. In reality, I have not. The key players have been substituted out and my own ideas and points of view have been substituted in, to some degree, as well. But really… it's just a substitution of players, not ideas! Isn't it ironic then, that the very individuals (white women) who easily conceive of their own subjugation and humiliation, would embrace and even celebrate a dynamic that continues to devastate and obliterate the lives, hopes and loves of other human beings. I speak with specific regard to POC.
And to borrow the words of writer of color Vanessa Robinson:
We adapt in diverse ways. Some of us give up. We mind our business and keep our heads down. We say nothing.
Others become militant. They go to Washington, DC on buses and listen to speeches. They work for political candidates that they believe in. And the rest, well, we may show up at a protest, or give money to organizations to fight for equality. Our equality. Mostly, though, we strive for success.
That is our revenge.
But we cannot stop the sexual assault of our sisters.
Unfortunately, although Ms. Robinson's words fit neatly into the narrative of sexual violence against women in general, there is an irony in that very thing. Representation of, and respect for the voices of WOC (Women of Color) in the larger narrative of sexual violence against women (not to mention racial violence against POC in general), is ignored. And as with the intersection of all factors in society, the intersection of racism, sexism and violence, is magnified and more devastatingly destructive to the lives of POC.
I borrow or reference the words of others with great care. I know my experience is not the same as Ms. Robinson's, or any POC. Yet, when I consider what I've learned and my own personal experiences and try to imagine how that, in concert with other -isms in American society, twist and pervert to rage into the lives of POC, I can only superficially understand the gravity of what it actually does to their lives.
My undergraduate education is years in the past now. I remember certain experiences very clearly though and the change of perspective attending them. One is specific to what I'm writing right now.
I was in a class on race and gender and we were talking about what it was to be a woman in American society. We were then asked to think about looking in a mirror and to think about what it was to look at the person in that mirror. There's the reflection, the person you know you are. But you're also looking at the face of someone else's definition. And that definition is imposed and the self you think you see is determined by that definition. You're a woman. You're also black (in that particular situation).
You're not just a woman. You're not just black. You're both of those things and neither of those things because their intersection reveals a vile fiction authored and imposed by a society steeped in a history of violence and abuse and death to those whose skin isn't white. And that definition is further complicated by the imposition of your own culture and its interplay with a culture you're not allowed part in, but still invades and infects every aspect of your own.
If it taught me anything, it was that however complicated I view my own life and trying to navigate its trials, it is that the complications faced by those who aren't white, are greater. Those complications are ignored and if they aren't ignored, they are scoffed at, ridiculed. Women's experiences are diminished and sometimes ridiculed, but they don't end up in a woman's (a white woman's) death here in the United States. The same cannot be said of POC. Those of black skin are the most notoriously and heinously targeted.
The words are interchangeable, but the language is not. It behooves us… no, it is downright compulsory upon us, to make them the same! The words and the language -must- mean the same for all human beings. To do that, the system that exists has to be dismantled, white supremacy as a system of thought, indifference and imposition upon POC must be destroyed. It is not the work of POC to do this. It is the work of white people, of white women when it comes to the language of American women becomes a shared construct of -ALL- American women.
