Always a good time to return to this piece written by Brothers Writing to Live: We begin this collective statement by proclaiming a truth that has been rehearsed on countless occasions by many before us: The lives, the bodies, the souls, and the minds of black people matter. And even though the spirit of these United States, since its inception, has been animated by a white supremacist desire for black death, black people have long resisted—by way of insurgencies, by way of self-love, by way of our daily living—white racists’s twisted and obsessive fascination with our demise. We live. And we refuse or, rather, refract the racial gaze that would have others view us (and we, ourselves) as markers for someone’s bullet, strange fruit ripe for some state’s lynching (execution) tree, commodified bodies necessary for the mushrooming of public and private prison industries, or mere subjects spoken about/spoken at/spoken over in legal chambers, political halls, and educational institutions. Indeed, these times are reflective of what anthropologist John L. Jackson has rightly named “racial paranoia.” Like Jackson, every day we witness the tragic, and often, violent results of other’s unfounded suspicion of and lack of trust in differently raced people in this country. And this is too common a phenomenon among those of us who exist on the other side of whiteness. But we refuse to let the lie of otherness mute the truth of our collective existence and power. Hashim Khalil Pipkin, Kiese Laymon, Kai M Green, Mark Anthony Neal, Mychal Denzel Smith, Marlon Precedent Peterson, Wade Davis, and Nyle Fort
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 22:28:35 +0000
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