The visual narrative of this movement continues to upset me. Again & again media sources who write sympathetic, impartial or objective articles about the protests & uprisings, and those who are leading them, pair their articles with images that continue a long tradition of representational violence against black and brown bodies. Particularly bodies that are also woman. Representational violence involves portraying or choosing not to portray an image of a person or group of people in a way that limits our ability to feel empathy for that person or group of people. Our inability to empathize shapes our interactions and assumptions about that person or group of people in a way that negatively impacts their quality of life. Here are two examples of that. Yesterday Erika Totten (@2liveunchained) of #ThinkMOOR, a lead activist and organizer in the DC movement, and Johnetta Elzie (@nettaaaaaaaa), a lead activist on the ground in #ferguson attended the March Against Police Brutality. Despite being major forces in the grassroots movement that has allowed us to arrive at the place of national discourse where we now stand, neither of these women--nor anyone of the other more than 400 Ferguson protesters or hundreds of DC protesters who have been actively participating in direct action and organizing--were invited to speak or were even officially addressed or recognized by the people who put this march together. As people who are and have been for the last 128 days committed to speaking truth to power, the significance of their exclusion from this major action was not lost on them or any number of other people who have been actively engaged in direct protest. These two articles decry the injustice of that act of exclusion and attempt to recenter and legitimate these voices, while choosing photos that do the exact opposite. The Root article was paired with an image of Erika wresting the mic from a mans hands, mouth open, face turned away from the man who holds the mic. Netta stands next to her watching as she does it. When I see this image, I see a woman fighting with a man to allow herself to be heard. Looking at this image through the lens of the white-supremacists-capitalist-patriarchal society that has taught me how to see, I see a woman disruptive, demanding, disrespectful, overly emotional and out of line. What I do not see is what I know exists: a woman who is unafraid to demand respect in places where people would otherwise view it as acceptable to disrespect her; a woman who is unafraid to disrupt the status quo and in fact who is committed to doing so until the status quo involves an understanding that values her humanity and the humanity of all black people; a woman who is unafraid to feel the things that she feels OUT LOUD, further to say that those feelings are valid, should be acknowledged, and that being able to feel those things are part of her strength. Where is the picture of this woman standing, unafraid addressing thousands of people--the world even--and telling our stories, the stories that have moved her to action everyday & every night in pursuit of justice? We as a society need to consume that image and other similar images. These images need to be part of our visual narrative and unconscious associations with those who are leading and participating in this movement. Excluding such images is an act of representational violence that continues in the tradition of excluding black people from leading roles in movies, images, books and other media. ( Im not even going on on the headline: fierce, bumrushed--lets just say angry black women and be done with it. I CANT>) I will not go into such detail deconstructing the visual narrative that accompanies the Sharpton article (mostly because this is a Facebook status-albeit a looong one). This is a fantastic article that intelligently critiques the March and its impact in the context of other such marches and their impact. Seeing their leading image and looking again through the lens of the white-supremacists-capitalist-patriarchal society that has taught me how to see, I see Al Sharpton in sharp focus behind one of the mothers who has lost her child. I do not know her name, because it is not mentioned in the caption or the article. Thats the first act of representational violence. The second blaring act of representational violence within this visual narrative is that even though the text is centered around the importance of remembering that this is a movement by, for and about everyday people, there are no pictures of any of those everyday people in the article. They are visually absent and we as readers of this article and consumers of these images will remember the face of Al Sharpton as we think about it and the narrative of this movement. ...I promise Im going to get a blog to store these responses... In the meantime, dont look at the pictures, but read these articles--Theyre great! #blacklivesmatter #staywoke #ferguson #dcferguson theguardian/commentisfree/2014/dec/13/march-on-washington-ferguson-movement-al-sharpton theroot/articles/culture/2014/12/the_fierce_urgency_of_now_why_young_protesters_bum_rushed_the_mic.html
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 17:53:02 +0000
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