Charles Mills (If...)

"… but in any case the general purpose of the Contract is always the differential provileging of the whites as a group with respect to the nonwhites as a group, the exploitation of their bodies, land, and resources, and the denial of equal socioeconomic opportunities to them. All whites are beneficiaries of the Contract, though some whites are not signatories to it."

-The Racial Contract, pg. 11

 ______________________________________

IF…

If you can't see how you benefit from racism
Open your eyes 

If you can't hear how what you said was racist
Listen again 

If you don't understand how you benefit from racism
Read a book 

If you don't know why that is hurtful
Put yourself in their shoes 

If you can't feel their insensitive
Open your heart 

If we listened more than talked
Perhaps we would understand more 

If we empathized more than accused
Perhaps we would be there for each other 

If we hungout with those different than ourselves
Ourselves would be more our than selves 

If we engage more than stay silent or run
We could make a difference 

If we build it together
We can right many wrongs 

If, if, if… do!

Kimberle Crenshaw (Say her name)

"The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite-that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences. In the context of violence women, this elision of difference in identity politics is problematic, mentally because the violence that many women experience is often by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring difference within groups contributes to tension among groups, other problem of identity politics that bears on efforts to politicize against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur mutually exclusive terrains. Although racism and sexism readily intersect the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist And so, when the practices expound identity as woman or person of an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of location that resists telling." 

"Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color" Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299

 ———————————————

Say Her Name

At the intersection of Black Lives Matter and Me too boulevard we find Sandra Bland
Another victim of the [insert your cities initials here] P.D. 
Another murdered Black woman
Say her name 

Breonna Taylor, in her home
In bed, fast asleep
Cops break in, unidentified, gunshots
Say her name 

No charges filed in the murder of Mya Hall
"Wrong turn," "wrong place," "wrong time"
"Wrong [trans]gender"
Say her name 

Oops, police "accidently" killed Gynnya McMillen
It happens… It was an oversight…
Nothing to see here, move along…
Say her name 

Black mother, grandmother, Eleanor Bumpurs
Behind on rent
Send the police, they’ll "take care" of her
Say her name 

They have carried the nation on their backs
Been beat, imprisoned, and murdered
Ignored, belittled, erase
No more… 

Say her name

(read more about the #SayHerName campaign here… http://www.aapf.org/sayhername/ )

James Baldwin

“All of the Western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the West has no moral authority. Malcolm, yet more concretely than Frantz Fanon—since Malcolm operated in the Afro-American idiom, and referred to the Afro-American situation—made the nature of this lie, and its implications, relevant and articulate to the people whom he served. He made increasingly articulate the ways in which this lie, given the history and the power of the Western nations, had become a global problem, menacing the lives of millions. “Vile as I am,” states one of the characters in Dostoevski’s The Idiot, “I don’t believe in the wagons that bring bread to humanity. For the wagons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already.” Indeed. And so it is now. Dostoevski’s personage was speaking of the impending proliferation of railways, and the then prevalent optimism (which was perfectly natural) as to the uplifting effect this conquest of distance would have on the life coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity.” Indeed, it was on this exclusion that the rise of this power inexorably depended; and now the excluded—“so it has been already”—whose lands have been robbed of the minerals, for example, which go into the building of railways and telegraph wires and TV sets and jet airliners and guns and bombs and fleets, must attempt, at exorbitant cost, to buy their manufactured resources back—which is not even remotely possible, since they must attempt this purchase with money borrowed from their exploiters. If they attempt to work out their salvation—their autonomy—on terms dictated by those who have excluded them, they are in a delicate and dangerous position, and if they refuse, they are in a desperate one: it is hard to know which case is worse. In both cases, they are confronted with the relentless necessities of human life, and the rigors of human nature.”

Excerpt From: James Baldwin. “No Name in the Street (Vintage International).” 

---------------------------------------------

Thanks, but no thanks
I will pass on your poison
The rye has rot
The apple makes me drowsy

Your smile, sultry
Its crooked deception
Telling me your my friend
But showing me foe 

The three inches of knife
Slowly pulled out
Is not enough
As six still remains 

The disease of my thought
From your infectious mind
Makes my heart hurt
Makes my soul weep 

I want to kill your hate
But that won't extricate 
These feelings
What have we become 

The violence we do
To each other, ourselves
Out of fear
Will not right these wrongs 

Love
Cautious love
Not forgetting pain
Trying to forgive 

It may be a start
Maybe the end
Seeds of hope
We can  grow 

But you must prove
You're more than greed
More than he
Please stop killing me

Patricia Hill Collins

"One way of approaching power concerns the dialectical relationship linking oppression and activism, where groups with greater power oppress those with lesser amounts. Rather than seeing social change or lack of it as preordained and outside the realm of human action, the notion of a dialectical relationship suggests that change results from human agency… Oppression and resistance remain intricately linked such that the shape of one influences that of the other. At the same time, this relationship is far more complex than a simple model of permanent oppressors and perpetual victims.

Another way of approaching power views it not as something that groups possess, but as an intangible entity that circulates within a particular matrix of domination and to which individuals stand in varying relationships. These approaches emphasize how individual subjectivity frames human actions within a matrix of domination." (274)

-Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

___________________________________________________________

First they came for the  _____________________________

            (fill in your race here)

Then they came for the  _____________________________

 (fill in your sexual preference here)

Then they came for the _____________________________ 

         (fill in your religion here)

Then they came for the _____________________________

     (insert your nationality here)

Then they came for anyone who wouldn't comply…

But instead, we came together
We recognized our differences
Learned from them
Honored them
Celebrated them
Utilized them

We fought
Side by side
Arm in arm
Black fists
White arms
Brown feet
Yellow legs
Gay hair
Lesbian lips
Trans bodies

United we stand
Divided we fall
Has never rang more true
In an age of division
Oppression
Subordination
Inequality
Inequity
Racism
Classism
Homophobia
Hate

We must fight it all
We must come together
We must be many
We must be one

Angela Davis (Steel & Stone)

“On any given day there are almost 2.5 million people in our country’s jails, prisons and military prisons, as well as in jails in Indian country and immigrant detention centers. It is a daily census, so it doesn’t reflect the numbers of people who go through the system every week or every month or every year. The majority are people of color. The fastest-growing sector consists of women—women of color. Many are queer or trans. As a matter of fact, trans people of color constitute the group most likely to be arrested and imprisoned. Racism provides the fuel for maintenance, reproduction, and expansion of the prison-industrial complex.”

From Freedom is a Constant Struggle. Pg 59.

Steel & Stone

Steel bars
Stone walls
Steel mind
Stone heart

Caged like a beast
The beast is me
Forever lost
In this insanity

Stone floor
Steel trap
Stone cold
Steel gaze

Broken inside
Want to break out
Trying to be heard
My silent shout

Malcolm X

"We haven't benefited from America's democracy. We've only suffered from America's hypocrisy. And the generation that is coming up now can see it, and are not afraid to say it. If you go to jail, so what? If you're black, you were born in jail. In the North as well as the South. Stop talking about the South. Long as you're south of the Canadian border, you're South…

It'll be the ballot or it'll be the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death. And if you're not ready to pay that price, don't use the word freedom in your vocabulary." 

From Malcolm X’s “Bullet or the Ballot” speech.

__________________________________

White Amerikkka has turned its back
It's now illegal to be Black
It has closed its eyes
It doesn’t give a fuck
Jail or death, test your luck?

The ballot has been thrown out
But there are plenty of bullets now
And guns for everyone
Fathers, daughters, and sons
Be afraid, be very afraid,
Smirks the NRA

But as a friend once said
Gun control without disarming the police, you'll still be dead.
They're militarized and quaking in their boots
Don’t be black, cause they will shoot

So here's some words for my white friends
Listen, learn, and help put this to an end
Cause we need you, with all your white might
Dismantling privilege and a system of hate
So that we can get to a place where we wont need to say… 

Take a knee
A man was lynched yesterday
I can't breath
Hands up, don't shoot
Black Lives Matter