malaluna

She walks into the room. All Black. All woman. All queer. On a scale of erasure to divisiveness, how effective is her voice when she's forced to choose between her identities in order to speak?

You see... while I completely understand how one may tire of watching slave narratives, I think the annoyance with the Roots series (2015) is unnecessary. After watching the past three parts of the series, you can see how the focus of this narrative is far different from many slave narratives one might be familiar with. 

The series emphasizes several things

It pinpoints and highlights the role of Irish immigrants/Irish-Americans as overseers and slave masters, thereby dismantling the common arguments among Irish folk that distances themselves from anti-Black racism. To continue with this point, Roots has also identified the discriminatory practices emphasized by American nationalism that allowed for aggression towards Irish Americans at that time (however, it is clear that Irish Americans were not dehumanized). 

Clear popular culture and current social justice references have been made clear throughout the series. This includes moments where Belle exclaims to Kunta Kinte, “Our love matters” and a wedding scene where hints of John Legend’s “All of Me” plays. 

Roots is a resistance focused production that has definitely come through in not constantly showing enslaved people as docile, submissive, and fearful. It stays true to the anger, the depression, and the disassociation of many but it does not rest there. 

The graphic nature of Roots does not allow for any accommodations to White fragility or guilt. They make sure that the narrative accurately follows the trauma experienced by each character as well as the nuances within that time. The dynamics of privilege are expressed so well. 

Aesthetically, the cinematography is amazing. The parallels the show creates provides such a clear connection to the characters which gives an opportunity to see how the bloodlines flow throughout a family, but the connection to a culture still thrives. 

There is a constant revisiting of the African vs. Black American dynamic of which Africans and those of immediate African descent consistently question Christianity being accepted among slaves (and vice versa). 

There are elements of this series that I, personally, am grateful for and I’m privileged to be watching this. It’s not the “softness” of 12 Years a Slave or the ridiculousness of Django Unchained. Although this adaptation of Roots seems to stray away from every detail of the published book, it stays true to history and adds in things the initial production didn’t (or couldn’t). This production has reinforced things that I already knew, helped me internalize those things, as well as have an open and honest conversation about this time and era -- things I never had the space to do.

Sacrifice by V V Brown

“This imbalanced exposure has existed for centuries and creates a psychological coping mechanism, the “cultural mask” – a term I have used for my video for Sacrifice. It represents a dual consciousness: a strange pendulum between wearing a mask and showing your true identity. This was a concept created by Frantz Fanon in his 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks. Fanon was a black activist and doctor of sociology who spoke about the layering of identities that a black person takes on to cope.

As a black person you almost automatically learn to use this this mask in order to survive in a society predominantly catering to a white audience. It shows in different forms – from extremes of self-hate, where all things black are rejected, to coping strategies such as not wearing braids to a job interview in fear of being deemed “too ethnic”. These compromising adaptation strategies help us feel included, avoiding the fear that if one was to show blackness in its entirety there will be alienation and confusion from one’s counterparts.”

February 14th, 2014 was a Friday.

I learned a few days before that Valentine’s Day was a day that many people who experienced sexual violence come forward about their traumas. It’s just a thing they do. I never heard about it until then and it was already one year and three months after my own assault.

I went to Ithaca College’s Title IX Coordinator that day. It was a year and three months since my assault and after the first couple of months, Public Safety stopped helping me (if we’re assuming they ever started). I needed to know what was happening with my case. I needed to know why they forgot about me. I needed to know if their “forgetfulness” was deliberate. I told this to the Title IX coordinator and she was sympathetic. She told me she would help me because she could only imagine what it was like to go through such a trauma and be ignored. She told me she was there to help. Coming from another woman, I felt as if I took a step in the right direction.

A week passed and nothing happened. Then two weeks. Then a month. Then a few months more. She worked in Res Life too so she saw me at every staff meeting. Nothing happened.

I wasn’t in the business of reminding anyone anything. I wasn’t in the mood for repeating my requests. Instead I stood silent because what could I possibly do that would change the trajectory of trauma that would make someone hear me the next time around? How many times would I have to scream “THIS HURTS ME!” to be recognized as valid?

Thank you, Alvin Kapalanga, Mikey, & the other friend who served as a lookout, for placing this trauma on my body.

Thank you Tom Dunn & Officer Teribury for doing the least you could possibly do for my case.

Thank you Tiffany Zieman, for forgetting.

I’ve experienced this repeated trauma of feeling unworthy, unheard, and unwanted for far too long. For the past year, I’ve questioned my existence and I mean this quite literally. I’ve wondered if I was physically real, whether my relationships were real, whether my trauma was real, whether all that I’ve experienced was real. The loss of security, relationships, and a healthy mental/emotional space has left me in this weird place that I cannot make a name for.

It doesn’t help that every day I hear/see anti-Black conversations debating the worth of Black bodies. It’s too much.

I want to take a bit of a hiatus from social media, the place I’ve learned to escape to because I didn’t feel like I could connect with what was right in front of me. I have learned how not to be present and this is not, by any means, a jab at technology and how it’s bad etc. etc. I just need to relearn how to trust being in a physical space with people enough to engage and be open.

I’m tired of questioning my existence.

At work, distressed, and wondering was her death ever as promised as Tamir’s?

Where are the ALM folk? Where are the folk who would blame her parents? Where are the folk who would blame HER for violence acted upon her?

Would that even happen?

“Tamir shouldn’t have been playing…” “Cops shouldn’t have to wait for the gun shot to…”

Prosecutor McGinty stated: “It would be irresponsible and unreasonable if law required a police officer to wait and see if the gun was real.”

Yet this woman is alive because…. procedure.

“Enforcing fairness” within a structure that doesn’t see Blackness as valid or worthy is oxymoronic.

Today is a rough fucking day for my psyche.