theblackvelvetcollective - Tumblr blog

[theblackvelvetcollective]

Musings from the Black Velveteen: The More You Know, the Black History Month Edition

by the Black Velveteen

Black History Month is back again, the same way it’s come back around since 1970. Wow….1970? Majority of Black folks have been celebrating Black history month for...only 51 years? Half a century is quite a bit of time for our Black History Month celebration to be so cyclic; and yet, Black folks will typically respond to that with “well Black History Month IS during the shortest month of the year”. Honestly, that bothers me to this day. What also bothers me is the way our African diasporic experience is framed. I remember every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (in January for those who may not be familiar) my predominately white all-girls private school had us read excerpts from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It wasn’t until I was in college at the University of Memphis (with a 33 percent African American student population) where I read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” accompanied by “Souls of Black Folks” by W.E.B DuBois and various other writings from Booker T. Washington, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Phyllis Wheatly, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni, just to name a few. My world, even as a young Black kid, was opened and I began to really see how expansive my culture and people were. But even then, I was only scratching the surface.

Most Black History Month (BHM) programs discuss three people in three ways. Dr. King as the “model negro” that the white folks love to sanitize and laude as the type of Black person Black people should aspire to be. Malcolm X as Dr. King’s antithesis; the “mean negro”, if you will. And then Rosa Parks, the Black woman to satiate the “feminists.” Those Big Three are legends within the Black cultural experience, but every February, they’re reduced to a two-sentence acknowledgement, if that. I began to wonder, “Well if my people are so expansive, and our history so rich and vast (even with all of the violence and pain): Why don’t we know more?” The answer that I discovered is that our historical perspectives are focused on cisgendered, hetero-presumed men that are, by definition of their outspoken rhetoric, leaders and representative of the Black community at large. This inequitable focus has limited our understanding of our history and how truly amazing it is.

Let’s think about that for a second: Imagine if we shifted our perspective from a patriarchal viewpoint and started to look at what Black women and femmes have done for not only Black people, but the world at large. 

In 1944, a young Black woman named Recy Taylor was raped by six white men. Rosa Parks was an NAACP organizer that connected with Recy Taylor and helped organize with Mrs. Taylor to share her story and demand justice. Rosa Parks founded the Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor and gained the support of notable Black, queer activists such as Mary Church Terrell and Langston Hughes. Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Taylor organized intentionally and were able to bring international attention to Mrs. Taylor’s case. Without knowing this about Mrs. Parks, one would not know that she was a main architect of bringing such attention to the patriarchal violence Black women were experiencing in the 1940s in America.

Another great Black queer feminist icon who is consistently left out during Black History Month but absolutely should be honored is Ms. Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha is the mother of the LGBTQIA+ civil rights movement as she was prominently involved in the Stonewall Riots 1969. In Greenwich Village in New York, many of the bars were run by mafia bosses. One night the police raided the Stonewall Inn and a riot ensued. At the heart of that riot was Ms. Marsha throwing rocks and hollering; this would ignite a new flame to the civil rights movement, one that was inclusive of Black trans women and Black queer folks. Marsha’s unmuted battle cries and righteous rage led to the birth of a movement that saw the founding of the first ever US trans rights organization, STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Ms. Sylvia Riviera, it saw a drag queen defy the gender binary (the “P” stood for “Pay It No Mind” in reference to Ms. Johnson’s response about her gender), and her legacy continues on today with many Black trans women demanding the removal of police from Pride activities and spaces.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Ms. Ida B. Wells-Barnett. We learn about the 19th Amendment and women getting the right to vote, but rarely do we hear about Ms. Ida B. Wells. Ms. Ida was a journalist and activist that had witnessed the horrors and trauma of the lynching of Black people across America. Rather than succumb to the overwhelming emotional trauma and grief lynchings were known to bring, Ms. Ida decided to write about the lynchings investigating and documenting the atrocities, something that had never been done before. Ms. Ida was not new to the “you know what: I’ll do it myself” school of thought. Ms. Ida traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s Parade, organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. She was subsequently told that the Black women suffragettes would have to march in the back. Ms. Ida was never going to participate in a segregated suffrage parade; so when the marchers passed, she boldly and intentionally stepped to the front of the parade. Ms. Ida did this because she wanted to make sure future generations would benefit from her action. These Black women are mothers of movements, icons, and leaders with their own rich history of defiance that young Black people, like me, are able to benefit from. Their bravery, radical honesty, boundless love, focus and determination more than qualify them as legends of Black History. As February comes to a close, I hope others are encouraged to look beyond the white-washed, sanitized and misleading narratives that typically invade Black History Month. Instead, shift your perspective to learn more about the mothers of movements, the Black queer history that is Black History, and the truly expansive nature of Black culture.

[theblackvelvetcollective]

Musings from the Black Velveteen: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion *are* Important

by the Black Velveteen

Picture it. Summer of 2000. I was a young fourth grader eager and excited to travel with my parents and my baby sister to Myrtle Beach. Living in landlocked Tennessee, going to the beach was truly an adventure! “Don’t touch the jellyfish even if they’re on the sand” I remember my daddy telling me. Sure, daddy I like to look at jellyfish more anyway. Besides, I had other plans. My momma had taken my sister and I to the Dollar Tree a week prior to our trip and told us we could grab whatever beach toys we wanted. For context, my sister and I had just learned how to swim so we were more than prepared to get the toys we wanted! Now, I am a solution oriented individual. I enjoy planning things out especially if I have made up my mind about them. So, of course, I made sure my sister knew that we were going to take full advantage of our time on the sandy Myrtle beach. We grabbed every single sandcastle building tool we could find and made sure our momma knew we needed them all. Thankfully, they were a dollar so convincing our momma that we needed them all was easy. As I stood on the beach in my little one piece swimsuit next to my sister in her matching one piece swimsuit: the true work was about to begin.

My sister and I wanted to build not just any sandcastle, but the bougie version. You know: the sandcastle with a moat. If you’re unfamiliar with a moat, it is a water filled ditch that surrounds castles allowing for only one way in and one way out and that was via a draw bridge that connected the other side of the moat to the castle. I am a person who likes to work smart, not hard. So I suggested that we build our castle first, then build our moat, then fill it with water. Simple enough plan that I shared with my parents just to make sure it wouldn’t be too difficult. They said the plan was a good one and so my sister and I began to work. We built a two and a half foot sand castle with designated wings and structures that we even named after some family members. My sister dug and dug and dug the moat. I helped, but she wanted a very deep moat: I was so proud of her hard work. Now for the cherry on top: water to fill the moat.

To help you visualize: my family was positioned about 500 feet from the ocean so my sister and I had to take our pales designated for “only moat water” to the shoreline, let the waves fill the buckets to the brim, then carry the water we could back and pour it into the moat we (she) dug. So we did our first run! We were so excited we knew we’d need a couple of trips to fill our moat but that was easy. We came back to our lovely sandcastle, stood on opposite sides of the moat and began to pour. Our jubilant smiles and bouncing legs soon turned to furrowed brows of confusion and stillness of disappointment.

We watched as the water levels kept going down until our moat was dry as a bone. My sister and I looked at each other confused and ran right back to the ocean. “Maybe there just needed to be a quick wetting of the sand. This next run we’ll see the water settle and rise!” But alas, it never did. We spent well over an hour going back and forth from the ocean to our beloved sandcastle only to be further frustrated and annoyed that our moat was not coming forth. On one run we looked over and saw some other kids, close to the shoreline, had created an (average and sloppy) sandcastle equipped with a fully functioning moat. They even had a little sail boat in the moat. My sister felt jaded and I was furious. How could this be happening? We had a plan. Our parents said it was a great one! We built a sandcastle of our own design that we were proud of. So why didn’t we have our moat? My sister, exhausted from running on sand in the hot sun, gave up. I kept putting water in until it was time for us to go back to our room. I was tired, but most of all I felt defeated. Not until a decade later did I learn that my parents had a conversation between themselves that they knew we couldn’t build a moat, but by not telling us it would keep us safe and continually in their sight and they would know where we are. As an adult: it totally makes sense, but as a nine year old I couldn’t understand why my efforts were not successful.

I remember that feeling of exhaustion and defeat. Working an entire day at the beach and finding out later my efforts were futile and in vain; also that my parents had withheld information from my sister and myself, albeit for our safety, but it kept us from reaching our goal of building a sandcastle that was for us, by us. This familiar feeling arose within me again as I continue to trudge through demanding equity, diversity, and inclusion at my workplace. By attending the Strategies to Build Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Leadership and Policies webinar, I learned why DEI work is so important and that in order for it to truly function within an organization, empowerment and trust are key. Those in power must be willing to share that power. Management cannot simply say that they are doing “good race equity work” when internally there is a lack of trust and no indication that equity, diversity, and inclusion are prioritized. When Black women, femmes, and gems are verbally berated in the office over a simple task and there is absolutely no accountability or consequences for the harm caused: then there is no trust. When women of color have to be put through a test just for their white supervisor to trust them because they didn’t trust the last employee in that position, shows that there is no competency on how imbalanced power dynamics can be harmful. When white women in power are allowed to be bigoted and the president of the organization is complicit in that behavior, that does not show a commitment to protecting those most marginalized in the workplace. It shows that power is settled at the top and those at the top are comfortable with keeping and protecting that power, rather than sharing.

By constantly working marginalized workers under stressful conditions of white supremacy, white feminism, bigotry, and classism: the moat is kept from being filled. However, if those in power were willing to share their power (or the marginalized seize the power, whichever comes first), a restructuring that is beneficial for all starts to occur. Systems of accountability that actually include consequences, starts to build trust between the marginalized and those with power. The empowerment to make decisions increases support and bolsters the community building that starts within an organization. By dismantling the hierarchical structure that marginalizes and harms BIPOC, we see an organization that can prosper. So, when building a sandcastle with a moat, try to find a compromise that shares power with the powerless and emboldens those who are committed to put forth their best effort. Move closer to the sea so you can fill your moat.