'Other' Black Lives Matter

Photo of the leaders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza (left), 

Opal Tometi (center) and Patrisse Cullors (right) is from here

In a recent exchange with S Baldwin, here on the blog, SB pointed out that in addition to Black men's lives, and those of Black male youth, there are other lives that also don't matter as far as mainstream media outlets are concerned: those of Black women and Black girls.

What is not new is that Black women's lives get subsumed in the lives of others who are oppressed and systematically killed. "Black people", too often, are sexistly assumed to only be "Black men". In too many dominant social spaces, trans people of any gender are assumed to be white.

All the Women are White, all the Blacks are Men... comes to mind.

I have had the great honor to hear Alicia Garza speak. To me, she is a solid example of "a great leader". She is also the kind of leader the white and male supremacist mainstream, in media or out of it, will unlikely acknowledge as such. Media doesn't like shared titles. Media likes 'the' leader. But Alicia speaks inclusively, which is in itself rare among white progressives or male radicals. She speaks of all the people, past and present, who art part of political struggles. Keeping with that tradition is not conducive to the Great White Male Leader narrative. Alicia speaks of the leadership and purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement, here:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29813-building-movements-without-shedding-differences-alicia-garza

An excerpt:
It's really hard for people to wrap their heads around a movement that is full of leaders. That's how our homes work; that's how our communities work; that's how our workplaces work, whether or not we want to talk about it. We're just trying to reflect our own realities. We're trying to create more pathways for more people to participate and engage. If we want a full democracy in this country, we can't just have people following one person. Everyone has to feel like they have a stake in shaping the kind of world that we live in. Otherwise, we get into a situation like the one that we're living in now, where nobody's happy with the leadership that we're getting.  -- Alicia Garza

Here are some links detailing the atrocities. There are many and there are not enough, but few of them come from the white male mainstream.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/07/at_least_5_black_women_have_died_in_police_custody_in_july_wtf.html

http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/12/whose-lives-matter-trans-women-color-police-violence/

http://www.womankind.org.uk/2015/05/sayhername-police-brutality-against-black-women-in-the-us/

I have thought often about the fact--to me a truthful one--that whites and men cannot lead us--the whole us--anywhere that is radically life-affirming and justice-bringing.

A Call for Contributors to Black IS an Emotion: Essays on the de-racialization of Queers of Color by their White Lovers

photo is from here

This was sent to me and I hope some of the readers of this blog will find (or be) contributors:

Black IS an Emotion: Essays on the de-racialization of Queers of Color by their White Lovers

White lovers who have attempted to diminish our right to have a wide spectrum of emotions by attaching negative and racially charged connotations to things we say: “I’m afraid,” “hurting,” “lonely” or “unsure,” suggests that there is still not enough honest discussion occurring in interracial relationships. In our attempts to understand and support our partners in their quest for wholeness, legitimacy, direction and self-awareness, we often put aside the essence of who we are, thereby allowing ourselves to be compartmentalized into “lesser” roles, such as: caretaker, sounding board, strong and/or silent other.

As lesbians and gay men of color, we believe that turning a wide range of personal experiences into literary disquisitions on racism in intimate interracial relationships, might in some way illuminate our own internal struggles at locating, naming and ultimately reversing the slow erosion of our unique identities/voice.  We ask: “Have we, for the sake of love and/or acceptance, allowed ourselves to become racially and culturally neutered in order to make our lovers more comfortable being next to ‘our skin?’” Have we allowed our emotions to become pathologized?

Through an interdisciplinary approach--relying in part on anti-categorical complexity to intersectionality as a possible jumping off point for discussion--this project will explore the largely unexamined issues of race/racism/sexuality in interracial queer relationships.

We are interested in engaging work that questions the social, political and racial divides within interracial relationships. Writers should avoid the over-use of jargon as this work seeks to present nuanced ideas in clear, straightforward language that will appeal to a broad audience.

Criteria

Send an 850 word abstract via email attachment to Monalesia Earle at: soho2paris@gmail.com or Russell Campbell at: rhotsoup@aol.com

The deadline for abstracts is December 15, 2011.

For general enquiries: soho2paris@gmail.com

Include a cover page with your contact information and a brief biographical statement of approximately 150 words. Final essays will be approximately 3,500 to 5,000 words, with an estimated deadline (if abstracts and the subsequent proposal is accepted by a publisher) of March 2012. Please put “BIAE” in the subject line.