wokeness
...with Africa Brooke's open letter, "Why I'm Leaving the Cult of Wokeness"
It’s 2019, there’s a mild riot in the streets. It’s not as bad as it is in bigger cities and other university campuses.
#MeToo.
There’s been some tweets about victims and perpetrators; a few name-drops. There’s rumours of suspensions. I don’t know any of these people. I’m on campus in the printmaking studio, I'm worried about my blind embossing book.
I leave the studio and head back to Res. I’m washing the dishes and worried about whether my work is good enough. The regular navel-gazing; my own day-to-day stuff. There’s no #MeToo anything in my dish-washing.
But I have this sense that I should be feeling more? Saying more. My peers are out there, expressing their rage at all the injustice. Young women my age have been taken advantage of and we’ve ALL had enough.
I'm part of this right?
Yes, I’m part of this. I should say “Me too,” I’m allowed.
In fact, by not saying “Me too” I’m in denial; I’m negating all the victims’ struggles. I need to add my own voice to amplify and validate their voices.
Wait, what about my own experiences? Where have I been violated, when have I experienced injustice? “Me too” what?
Where have I experienced injustice in my daily, safe walk to campus? In-between my classes and to the little shopping square a block away from campus?
Actually, don’t I always walk to Chicken Licken’ late in the evenings after choir, cellphone in my handbag dangling loosely from my shoulder? Kung Fu Kitchen across Res on lonely Sundays when there’s no one out but one or two car guards on the empty sidewalks?
Nothing has ever happened TO ME.
And yet, bad things do happen on these small roads and the meandering buildings on campus. I just haven’t experienced any of it.
What?
I haven’t. I’m sorry…I guess?
Because I’ve just been worried about my assignments, and my family…and a myriad other things. I’m not saying these take precedence over everything else that’s been happening right here…
But “Me too” is not my story.
“Oppressed,” “abused,” or “victim” is NOT my identity.
So I write this open letter to an unidentified character about how in the background of this big political outburst, as a person who lives in the same racial body as the victims this movement seeks to speak for, it doesn’t feel like it speaks for me.
And I’m okay with it. I’m not saying the riots should stop, but I don’t feel the need to pick up a banner and take to the streets.
Cut to 2020.
In America, there’s a big conversation around blackness, its oppression and its long-delayed emancipation…
in my little corner of the world thousands of kilometres away from where men and women are occasionally treated like criminals, here where no one has ever met one of them and only hear of them over braai fires from distant noises called "news," from my little Chevy Spark I get out, I walk over to them, they talk to me over their backs child they call me. "is there a problem?" their eyes point me down, I insist, I walk after them, "I won't be bullied, they raised me up to stand up to people like you." My only regret is trying to rally the cashier who transits understanding to them and sends them off with a smiling "thank you" avoiding the mirror of her brown eyes that is my own eyes, she rolls back I try, again, desperate bathini laba, "what are they saying?" COMRADE, COME ON is what I'm really saying
Am I oppressed? I start asking.
The answers come rushing,
Yes, yes of course you’re oppressed.
I start seeing proof of this everywhere. In employers who don’t treat me kindly, in white people who call me out for bad driving while parking in a shopping centre…in white peers getting promoted over me for being more competent.
I find myself subconsciously looking for things that would piss me off:
White people who can’t pronounce my name properly, with the right accent and inflections…conversations with my white friends where their responses are just not “woke” enough thereby making them undoubtedly racist…
Africa Brooke, in her open letter, Why I’m Leaving the Cult of Wokeness, (from which all the quotes below come), recounts a similar experience when she’s been pulled so deeply into “wokeness” that she starts dishing out this vengeance that she suddenly feels compelled to give to an unreasonable, self-harming extent:
I also publicly shamed an unsuspecting man who had messaged me to question me about my conduct (I immediately assumed he was white…he was mixed race). And even though his approach was not a welcome one, he wasn’t unkind to me - which is why I’m not proud of the unkind way in which I reacted…not responded, reacted.
I also, start acting from this impulse to solidify with wokeness. To “fall in line” and call out the “oppression” in my life. Ironically, in the name of a movement that seeks to highlight the individuality of blackness and black voices, I feel like I have to conform strictly to the pack.
Are we really not a monolith?
‘We are not a monolith’ has become a common statement within communities that identify as marginalised…I’ve noticed that despite this being a popular mantra - when someone ‘steps out of line’ or dares to think differently…it’s a different story. You will often have the pleasure of being told that you are in denial and have some kind of internalised disorder
I can see this punishment in so many circles of “brothers and sisters” that have kicked me out for internalised racism or internalised white supremacy:
A caucus of black members in a choir kicks me out for refusing to share its communal, disapproving views about the leaders of this choir. For me, I feel this historically-white choir embraces me by extending me every kind of help to participate in it: a full financial scholarship, support, kindness, friendship, respect…welcoming me and trying everything to make my stay, as a minority, comfortable.
TRYING to correct the mistakes of their ancestors. I want nothing more.
Some white people in the choir speak a different minority language. As black people, we are also allowed to speak our own languages. When necessary we gather on the common ground of the English language.
The caucus wants no difference in languages, in the name of “inclusivity.”
To me, it looks like “intolerance.” And I can’t stand by it, so I don’t flock with the caucus. Virtually, the few black people in a space that is predominantly white reject me, a black person like them.
I fervently reject the idea that all white people are racist and must be shamed into confessing their sins and admitting complicity in all of their ancestors’ indiscretions…simply because of the colour of their skin. I reject this bullish*t idea that every white person walking this planet is ‘inherently racist.’
I’m rejected because I’m black and I am refusing to say I’m being marginalised where I am not.
I’m tired of hearing that because I’m black, I should feel victimised. That because I’m black I should agree with everything that black people do and say (surely NO ONE should have this expected of them).
Thank you Africa Brooke for making it “make sense,” finally.
After all this, that is still ongoing. And must go on, because identity and racial discourses are truly important.
I’m well aware of the systems we live under. I know what’s happening in the world. I’ve lived it. I acknowledge reality, but I refuse to be a slave to a disempowering narrative that rarely focuses on actual solutions.
For me nothing’s changed.
From ghosting friends for not knowing things that they just “should know” about blackness or else they’re inherently racist…
I’m circling back to where I always was, way back when I even had language for it, because I find that most of us are now tripping over language.
Do we even know what we’re saying? Or are we just regurgitating /parroting things, and now it’s gotten out of control.
I don’t want to live obsessing with political correctness and waiting to trip people over their words. I care about having conversations on difference and I won’t stop having them, but I won’t have them at the expense of real connection and compassion.
I want to live a life that isn’t centred around identity politics and all that comes with it, so much more in my life takes priority.
HALLELUJAH.
I want to remain open to new ideas, perspectives, and thoughts - so that I can grow, course correct where necessary, and make a genuine impact on a local and global level.
I never want to live in a merciless echo chamber.
I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and continue using discernment instead of making sweeping harmful (often lazy) assumptions based on the colour of people’s skin or their gender.
Because after all, where does narrow thinking and mob mentality serve me?
Does is not just result in isolation and loneliness?
I’m asking for something else.
I want conversation. I want questions asked with no shame, and answers given with grace.
Keep seeing difference friend, celebrate it.
Let it expand your life, not shrink it.
Best,
Siphumelele
P.S
If you can friend, please read this life-changing open letter by writer, consultant and just all-round inspiring person, Africa Brooke.