We are not “the blacks”. Americans of African descent are from every community that
our current president seeks to destroy in the name of “protecting the American
people.” We are Muslim. We are from the countries whose citizens are no longer allowed
to enter the United States. We are non-Heterosexual and non-Cisgender. We are
from Mexico. We immigrated to this country. We are from the inner cities on
which he has declared war. We are NOT from the inner cities on which he has
essentially declared war. We are indeed people who receive a wide variety of
financial assistance from the Federal Government. We are disabled. We are
people with uteri. We are female. And a few of us are people who voted for
45.
The worst thing that oppression has done to black
people is taught us that we are monolithic and that there is no such thing as
intersectionality. The other thing that it taught us is that there is a “them”
to avoid being in order to remain safe. It has taught us that oppression is a
negative meritocracy. And we can earn release from oppression by not being an “other”
or a “them”. Therefore, as long as we are constantly in a space of proving that
we are not “them”, as long as we are diverting attention away from our “otherness”
and pointing to the “them” over there, we’re safe.
The problem with that assertion is that it is simply
not true. Also, this sort of internal divisiveness and othering has always
created more damage than safety. It has always function as a very useful tool
for the oppressor. It weakens us and makes it easier for systems of oppression
to divide and conquer and destroy our movements against oppression from the
inside out.
But my hope for our community is that the shenanigans
of this current administration will teach us is that we ARE “them”. We are
every “them”. I’m also hoping that it will finally teach us all these lines and
distinction have never mattered. I hope that we can remember and get into our
collective psyche that our ancestors were not colonized and enslaved because of
anything they were or were not or anything they did or didn’t do. They were
enslaved and oppressed because oppressive, supremacist, tyrannical systems were
allowed to rise worldwide. And people continue
to be oppressed not because they are “them” but because this history keeps
being allowed to repeat itself.
The sooner we remember this, the sooner we’ll stop
othering within our own communities, the sooner we can unite across the
diaspora, across these dividing lines, it will become even harder for us to be
divided and conquered. And we may finally collectively defeat these systems that
seek to kill us.
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