Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023Liked by Courtney Martin
I'm so glad you're interrogating publicly the "always follow Black women" trope which has emerged in the last handful of years. It is an idea that comes from a truism of all systems based on hierarchies of power, that those at the bottom by necessity often maintain broader and deeper levels of insight about the nature of the system than those farther up the ladder. It's how you survive. Black women, based on their intersectional oppressions, are those people in America. But leaning on them to save us, particularly us as White women, IS simply racism wearing a velvet glove. On par with exoticization and all the other ways that we put BIPOC on pedestals while simultaneously undergirding the status quo.
And at the same time, there's just so much to keep track of these days. It's nearly impossible to formulate an informed opinion on every blessed thing. So, for me anyway, "trust Black women" is the starting place. If I want to understand something social/systemic I'm gonna start with what Black women are saying about it (or indigenous women, or AAPI women, or Latinas, etc.) and then continue learning and formulating from there. Trusting Black women is the starting place, and not the end of our obligation by a long shot.
Ask better questions. Yes. Thank you Courtney.I’ve been reading your words for years and consider you a trusted voice and a friend of sorts. Big appreciation for what you share.
Once again, you are an amazing and thoughtful writer. What happened, I believe, is rooted, in part, in our American need to shove the responsibility of "safety" onto a small group of heavily armed people. This makes brutality inevitable. In reality, we must all be responsible for safety in a community. You see the same mentality regarding our schools; educating our kids is outsourced to teachers and too many of us refuse to be involved. It's everyone's responsibility. We all need to step up and see things in a community lens.
Courtney has given us such ample wisdom and information here at a time when we join in grief over this tragic violence in Memphis. In addition to the sources that Courtney has noted, I'd like to recommend the remarkable ideas and example of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (Barnard '81). She spoke yesterday on a panel organized by Barnard that addressed issues of anti-Semitism and racism. Her eloquence was overwhelming as she invoked the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi on love, compassion and nonviolence.
An important aspect of her message was the violence towards Muslims in the U.S. and around the world. The attack last Monday on a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan that left over 100 dead leaves us to ask how Muslims could do this to other Muslims? (see NY Times, 2/1, pp.1,12).
Rabbi Kleinbaum's invocation of Gandhi echoed the message of James Baldwin in "The Fire Next Time". This reading is imperative, and his opening letter to his nephew ranks as the most compelling of all his magnificent writings. Baldwin concluded: "We, with love, shall force our [white]brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it." DD
Miracles and disasters, heaven and hell. We can't find the middle ground because we aren't grounded in collective practices of care and sharing. We need to tear down the police stations, but we also need to simultaneously be building the practices that will replace them. I was just re-reading this provocation from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, from her book Undrowned: “What if school, as we used it on a daily basis, signaled not the name of a process or institution through which we could be indoctrinated, not a structure through which social capital was grasped and policed, but something more organic, like a scale of care. What if school was the scale at which we could care for each other and move together.”
I actually heard that the modern police department model came from Sir Robert Peeler in the early 1800s in London, which he did out of necessity to curb the high crime rate at that time. Most other western countries adopted his model. Read the short summary part of the article below to see his name. https://www.britannica.com/topic/police#ref36606
I'm so glad you're interrogating publicly the "always follow Black women" trope which has emerged in the last handful of years. It is an idea that comes from a truism of all systems based on hierarchies of power, that those at the bottom by necessity often maintain broader and deeper levels of insight about the nature of the system than those farther up the ladder. It's how you survive. Black women, based on their intersectional oppressions, are those people in America. But leaning on them to save us, particularly us as White women, IS simply racism wearing a velvet glove. On par with exoticization and all the other ways that we put BIPOC on pedestals while simultaneously undergirding the status quo.
And at the same time, there's just so much to keep track of these days. It's nearly impossible to formulate an informed opinion on every blessed thing. So, for me anyway, "trust Black women" is the starting place. If I want to understand something social/systemic I'm gonna start with what Black women are saying about it (or indigenous women, or AAPI women, or Latinas, etc.) and then continue learning and formulating from there. Trusting Black women is the starting place, and not the end of our obligation by a long shot.
Excellent article on such a terribly complex subject
Ask better questions. Yes. Thank you Courtney.I’ve been reading your words for years and consider you a trusted voice and a friend of sorts. Big appreciation for what you share.
Once again, you are an amazing and thoughtful writer. What happened, I believe, is rooted, in part, in our American need to shove the responsibility of "safety" onto a small group of heavily armed people. This makes brutality inevitable. In reality, we must all be responsible for safety in a community. You see the same mentality regarding our schools; educating our kids is outsourced to teachers and too many of us refuse to be involved. It's everyone's responsibility. We all need to step up and see things in a community lens.
Courtney has given us such ample wisdom and information here at a time when we join in grief over this tragic violence in Memphis. In addition to the sources that Courtney has noted, I'd like to recommend the remarkable ideas and example of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (Barnard '81). She spoke yesterday on a panel organized by Barnard that addressed issues of anti-Semitism and racism. Her eloquence was overwhelming as she invoked the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi on love, compassion and nonviolence.
An important aspect of her message was the violence towards Muslims in the U.S. and around the world. The attack last Monday on a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan that left over 100 dead leaves us to ask how Muslims could do this to other Muslims? (see NY Times, 2/1, pp.1,12).
Rabbi Kleinbaum's invocation of Gandhi echoed the message of James Baldwin in "The Fire Next Time". This reading is imperative, and his opening letter to his nephew ranks as the most compelling of all his magnificent writings. Baldwin concluded: "We, with love, shall force our [white]brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it." DD
I absolutely love the last part of the James Baldwin quotation. Miracles become disasters in the real world.
Miracles and disasters, heaven and hell. We can't find the middle ground because we aren't grounded in collective practices of care and sharing. We need to tear down the police stations, but we also need to simultaneously be building the practices that will replace them. I was just re-reading this provocation from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, from her book Undrowned: “What if school, as we used it on a daily basis, signaled not the name of a process or institution through which we could be indoctrinated, not a structure through which social capital was grasped and policed, but something more organic, like a scale of care. What if school was the scale at which we could care for each other and move together.”
Thank you for these powerful and poignant words, Courtney.
I actually heard that the modern police department model came from Sir Robert Peeler in the early 1800s in London, which he did out of necessity to curb the high crime rate at that time. Most other western countries adopted his model. Read the short summary part of the article below to see his name. https://www.britannica.com/topic/police#ref36606