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Ta-Nehisi Coates on words that don't belong to everyone | We Were Eight ...

Coates first pointed out that it is normal in our culture for some people or groups to use certain words that others can’t. For example, his wife calls him “honey”; it would not be acceptable, he said, for strange women to do the same. Similarly, his dad was known by his family back home as Billy — but it would be awkward for Coates to try to use that nickname for his father.

“That’s because the relationship between myself and my dad is not the same as the relationship between my dad and his mother and his sisters who he grew up with,” Coates said. “We understand that.”

The same concept applies to different groups and their words. “My wife, with her girl friend, will use the word ‘bitch,’” Coates said. “I do not join in. You know what I’m saying? I don’t do that. I don’t do that. And perhaps more importantly, I don’t have a desire to do it.”

Coates pointed to another example — of a white friend who used to have a cabin in upstate New York that he called “the white trash cabin.” “I would never refer to that cabin” in that way, Coates said. “I would never tell him, ‘I’m coming to your white trash cabin.’”

Coates added, “The question one must ask is why so many white people have difficulty extending things that are basic laws of how human beings interact to black people.”

He gave a potential answer: “When you’re white in this country, you’re taught that everything belongs to you. You think you have a right to everything. … You’re conditioned this way. It’s not because your hair is a texture or your skin is light. It’s the fact that the laws and the culture tell you this. You have a right to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, be however — and people just got to accommodate themselves to you.”

“So here comes this word that you feel like you invented,” Coates said. “And now somebody will tell you how to use the word that you invented. ‘Why can’t I use it? Everyone else gets to use it. You know what? That’s racism that I don’t get to use it. You know, that’s racist against me. You know, I have to inconvenience myself and hear this song and I can’t sing along. How come I can’t sing along?’”

Coates concluded that white people should use this sense as a lesson: “The experience of being a hip-hop fan and not being able to use the word ‘ni**er’ is actually very, very insightful. It will give you just a little peek into the world of what it means to be black. Because to be black is to walk through the world and watch people doing things that you cannot do, that you can’t join in and do. So I think there’s actually a lot to be learned from refraining.”

When I was in high school (a predominantly white school), my AP class teachers would finish the lectures early (because AP exams were well before the end of the school year). They would use that extra time to impart life lessons upon us. Dating/Relationships would always be a subject that they felt the need to educate us on. So one year a white male teacher decided to tell us that girls should ask guys out too. He then asks if any girl in the class has done that. Only one raised their hand. He said he was surprised I hadn’t because I seemed pretty confident...He asked me how I felt about being at a PWI and having to have a social life there. I said it was hard and sometimes lonely because I’m never surrounded by people who look like me, have the same mindset as me and see the world like I do. This man responded by telling me that most of the black people in the school weren’t going to be in AP classes with me, especially not the boys who were less likely to take those classes and that they weren’t “on my level” so he understood how being the only Black person in most of my classes and not taking any classes with black boys might make me feel that way.

I had a similar discussion in a different class and in it, I said that I pick an choose which non-Black people I will talk to or just straight up cancel after they say something or do something offensive. A white boy in the class said that I was being self-righteous and judgemental because who am I to determine who is worthy of that knowledge and my forgiveness (see entitlement!). My response was that I am someone who has to protect my own peace so if I feel like its a waste of time I won’t bother. I do not exist in this INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING to educate other people. If people wanted to learn, there are many intellectuals that are willing to teach them. No one is entitled to my time or my energy. This does not mean I am silent on issues, it just means that go about it in a way that isn’t detrimental to my own health. This is not a convenience thing for me, it's more of an assessment of energy costs to me vs. educational benefit to the person. If they are the type of person to “not hear me because of the way I am speaking”, (I can usually tell by the way they handle “less difficult” nonracial disagreements), then I won't bother with them but I might say something to other people who have witnessed the event. 

I think that alot of the times people don’t consider how constantly having to teach other people how to be decent human beings and treat Black people like humans can take a toll on Black people. They don’t realize that this person that they are trying to squeeze answers out of is human too, with their own feelings and their own stresses. Its just an overall disregard of black people as individuals existing outside of other people's expectations/they images people project on us. Like, why can we just exist/be outside of an object other people can use for their own purpose (for knowledge/wokeness points, validation, and guilt alleviation)? 

However, I do acknowledge that my opinions and feelings are helpful and that my “anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.” I know that it can be used for good but, like Dr. Lou said, it takes a certain amount of patience, and I think maturity to be able to do something positive with anger. If I feel like I am not in a clear headspace to do that kind of work, my attempt at doing it will just fall flat so it is sometimes best that I take a minute instead of just reacting. That way when I do speak up, it makes a positive impact on people instead of coming off as disorganized and fueled purely on emotions and not facts (because people will ask for receipts so I have to have them). If that makes sense. 

I do want to be a benefit to the community and I understand the gravity and importance of that work. I believe that if I can focus on people who are just ignorant (lacking knowledge) instead of people who are stupid (lacking the mental capacity for knowledge), I will be able to facilitate more change. You can’t really fix stupid. Its a fixed trait at that point. The person has a personality disorder that no amount of my teaching can help. Some people are just disagreeable. Whereas, people who just don’t know any better, will be able to hear me no matter how uncomfortable it might make them because they are open to knowledge.

If my methods are wrong, let me know if you want. Its always good to learn how one can be a better (Black) citizen.

Other things I liked that Lorde Said:

“Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.”

I think this is an important distinction to make because some people (who are lowkey revealing thier own hatred in doing so) will mistake the two and claim someone is being divisive and hateful when addressing racial issues.

“We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty; we must be quite serious about the choice of this topic and the angers entwined within it because, rest assured, our opponents are quite serious about their hatred of us and of what we are trying to do here... Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change... I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. ”

-Lorde, Uses of Anger

Here’s Griffin with the assist:

“I am optimistic in believing if I step into the space that resistant cries have created, maybe, just maybe, something about my resistant voice in this moment will be heard, taken in, and taken seriously. Maybe...Reminding me of the significance of self-definition and self-determination, Lorde (2009) says, ‘‘If I do not bring all of who I am to whatever I do, then I bring nothing, or nothing of lasting worth, for I have withheld my essence’’ (pp. 182–183). Having been barred from bringing my angry essence for so long, since angry emotions are outlawed for Black women who wish to be welcomed, I yearned for a medium through which my voice could be heard...I began to wonder if I could channel my anger productively and manage to see more than just red. I imagined myself peering purposefully inward to question how I understand who I am, our world, and how I move through our world. Slowly grasping how to do so, I listened closely when Lorde (1984) told me that ‘‘Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change’’ (p. 127). Given the vulnerable enormity of doing such work from a Black feminist standpoint, in response to the queries of why? Why try, why write, why speak, why stay, why struggle?, akin to Jones in ‘‘sista docta,’’ ‘‘I believe that the work can be transformative’’ (Jones, 2003, p. 240). Also, mirroring Houston (1992) and Collins (2009), I feel obligated to use my access to class and academic privilege to advocate for women who look like me to have access to voice. ”

-Griffin, I Am An Angry Black Woman

These really got to me because I do acknowledge that sometimes I have been afraid to show my emotions because of how people have reacted in the past, but now that I am a little wiser, I realized the importance of my perspective. I can’t continue to censor my own truth in a world that is already constantly trying to censor it. 

And to finish:

“I AM Angry. I am angry at the absurdity of our absence. I AM Angry. I am angry at my silence and yours; at my complicity and yours; at my world and ours. I AM Angry”

-Griffin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

-James Baldwin

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”

-Malcolm X

People are always assuming I’m angry and telling me to calm down whenever I question something, ask about something or say anything at this university, period. I think because of that, I definitely internalize that feedback so sometimes in moments when I should be angry I just skip right into sadness and do nothing. After reading this, I definitely want to have less of those moments because they don’t serve me or my people. I care about my people so I should try to make sure future generations have it easier. There’s no need to spare people my anger at injustices brought against me and people I love because as Malcolm X also said, “Anyone depriving you of your freedom isn’t deserving of a peaceful approach.”

“To embody the prideful tenacity that Black womanhood brings forth, I will do the very things that Black women are discursively disciplined not to do. I will rant Black Feminist Autoethnography without a hint of regret, and I will do so with my head held high believing that I am worth standing up for in a world that crudely tells me otherwise! Planting my feet in defiance, I will finish just as I have begun—weary, depleted, ‘‘shaken, though not shattered’’ (Yancy, 2008, p. 2), and convinced that I am a brilliant woman of color who is worthy of sheer honesty, deep contemplation, and everlasting celebration.”

-Sharpe, “The Wake”

Yara Shahidi. 

ON RIOTS, INTEGRATION, RESPECTABILITY POLITICS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF IT ALL

Since MLK day just passed and we were discussing the differences between BLM and the civil rights movement, being the inclusion of all types of Black people and the exclusion of respectability politics and patriarchy, I’ve been thinking about if and how Black people have been so-called integrated into America. It seems that there is a push to become like white people as if they are the pillar of humanity and those who don’t are marginalized and othered in ways that create the racial disparities we still see today (health, housing, state violence, the demonization of our youth, etc.). The gag is, even if you do, you’ll still be subject to many of those things.

Angela Davis said it best: “I have a hard time accepting diversity as justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy...Diversity without structural transformation simply brings those who were previously excluded into a system as racist and as misogynistic as it was before.” It seems to me that the best route is that of BLM: to create a separate genre of being as Audre Lorde suggests. Malcolm X said this is preferred "so [we] can develop [our] character and [our] culture in accord with [our] own nature.” 

“I’ve come upon something that disturbs me deeply. We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know we will win, but I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house. I’m afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had, and I’m afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensure that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears the soul of this nation. I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house. [We should,] become the firemen. Let us not stand by and let the house burn.” 

-MLK

“And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.” 

-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

...

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!

-Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again

“I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense, our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. ”

-MLK

It is sad that some of what was said about the US decades ago is still true of today. 

"You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father's time, my mother's time. My uncle's time. My brother's and sister's time. My niece's and my nephew's time. How much more time do you want for your...'progress'?"