culture fix

say you live for the highest ideals,

say love is above all else,

say you won't just settle.

not in this lifetime

this one time to try.

ok, i believe you;

ok, i'll tell you my dreams.

whether you say so or not

i'll believe we can live them out.

but, tell me,

how many tired eyes have you seen?

how many people do you know that are basically happy?

how much love have you lost to your own fear?

i think the most beautiful people

are children

and people that love like children.

adults know already

all the logical, practical reasons

why dreams will never work

why settling is always best

and anyway, it's always easier

to be right and miserable

than in love

and making the wrong choice.

history demands of us only one thing:
we must tell what it is that we have done.
to do so
we must ask
those who came before us
those whom we intend to love
those whose lives are affected by our actions
and, hardest, but most important of all,
(though maybe it should go without saying)

we must ask ourselves
to unearth the stories that comprise the intricate web of a lifetime
and bring them into the daylight.

there is a tremendous weight
in not knowing,
or not being able to say
where and why you came from
who, what and how you have made of your time alive.
whatever it is that we have experienced
but cannot name
promises to hover,
promises to haunt us.

there is nothing so beautiful
as revealing what it is that you have lived and felt
and being fully heard.

the so-called free market will kill you for not complying.
the religions of the world will shame you and damn you for your regrets and imperfections.
the state will chastise, criminalize, and confine you for whatever it deems unacceptable.

but history only asks
that we tell the story.

"as an everlasting possession, i will give you and your descendants the land in which you are now strangers."

- God to Abraham, the book of Genesis.

i have decided that i want to form an organization for white people that looks out for our interests.

the only other organization that has done this in any significant way is the ku klux klan. but i'm not talking about starting a second kkk.

me and the klan disagree on one fundamental point. put simply, it goes a little something like this:

kkk - what's in the interests of whites is in the interests of white folk.

vs.

me - our whiteness is in conflict with humanity, so we'll never be human until we stop being white.

i believe that - as a result of our history of instigating and maintaining slavery, colonization, genocide and apartheid - whites are no longer human beings. we have lost everything that makes a "people" people.

we made ourselves white when we made africans into property (and negroes/blacks/niggers). so the only way out of our despicable position as whites is to rectify our relationship with black people - the descendants of slaves - in this country. sinces whites were made by making slaves/blacks, our connection to blacks is our only possible hope of resititution amongst the human family.

as adamantly as the klan insists that the only possible course of action is the perpetuation of white power at every level of society, i insist that the only possible course of action is the destruction of white as an identity in every shape and form.

for now, i consider my anti-klan clan to be essentially a moral position. morally, we as whites are desparately lost, pitifully wandering away from any connection to other human beings and constantly digging a deeper trench in which to fortify ourselves against any possible reconciliation. and yet, this description is based on a solid (and well documented) body of historical evidence. in that, the clan represents a politics- an expression of historical analysis in contemporary action.

in practical terms, our work as a clan is to assist - in whatever way we can - black people in their struggle to establish themselves as human beings and full participants in the society that they live in.

this is not at all like charity.

we must insist on struggling in our own interests.

we must realize that our only hope to live again on this earth, as people amongst peoples, is utterly dependant on our capacity to bury forever the wicked system of racialism that american slavery created.

people talk about "getting past" black and white, but we can't until there's neither. people talk about white privilege, but privilege is the entire substance of our whiteness, so why be redundant? people talk about being an "ally" to "people of color," but who will fight to be a helper, an assistant?

my clan will put things bluntly:

white folks are fucked; we can't be human if we've got to be white.

we've got to be white if folks got to keep being black.

we've got to do everything we can to help black people overthrow the system of american racial oppression.

once we get to be human beings - which will be the exact moment of black liberation from racialism - we can begin a discussion of human equality.

until then, a one-point program:

make whites people, now!

i wore my "tear down the israeli apartheid wall" shirt today. it's a nice shirt; i get compliments. and yet, the shirt led me into a rather sinister conversation with myself.

i thought to myself, "we are against the wall. we are ok with seeing it torn down. we might even help tear it down. but then, what do the palestinians think of the wall?" thinking back to my time in palestine (summer 2002) - when there was no wall being built - i remembered that, wall or no wall, the palestinian people are fighting a war for *survival*. at the end of the day, they must devise a plan to kill israelis.

this is a simple realization. a people being invaded by an occupying army of momentous proportions and vicious determination *must* find a way to murder their occupiers. how else to get the bastards to leave?

but then, can we white folks in the US really grasp this simple little thought? i mean honestly, that i am able to live on this continent has a great deal to do with the fact that indigenous people's resistance on this continent was not sufficient to drive us into the sea. european settlers gained footholds here and then expanded those footholds until they could shove their whole fucking boot down the throats of native peoples. but what if the natives had poisoned our drinking water? slit the throats of our babies? buried us to the neck in anthills? in short, what if indigenous people had the tenacity and viciousness that has characterized european civilization in every incarnation? plainly speaking, there would be no "united states."

and so now the palestinian people face the latest and most vicious onslought of european colonialism. what else can they do but fight to kill and pray to god (allah ackba! god is great!) that their warfare will lead to victory over the colonizers?

and if the best a desperate people have to hope for is murder, how do we - as inheritors of settler colonialism - show "solidarity" with murder of our settler-brethren?

the israelis share a profound psychic bond with white america (and afrikaaners and ulster protestants) that makes us brethren in perhaps the sickest concoction humanity has ever devised.

so how genuine is our support for palestine? how deeply do we value self-determination? can we - in our hearts and minds - go beyond calling for the destruction of a wall? can we allow ourselves to cheer on the tearing down of the very fabric of israeli (and thus our own) civilization?

allah ackba!

"I understand that language breeds stereotype, but what's the explanation for the malice, for the spite? DON'T CALL ME WHITE."

- NOFX

Of course, what NOFX and most other white people don't acknowledge is history. History explains perfectly the malice and the spite that is directed towards white people. As soon as we try and sit with the conditions that produced racialism and white supremacy - and then, of course, to enforce white power for so long - resentment towards white people will no longer be a mystery.

Given the history of this country, (and the European imperial project worldwide) anger is both justifiable and unavoidable. And while pacifists may hope to redeem humanity without a tremendous bloodletting, there is and will continue to be a great deal of bloodshed as a result of white people and the systems they have created. Disgustingly enough, a great deal of this bloodshed will be oppressed people killing themselves and one another, rather than striking back at powerful whites (witness rwanda, witness the 9th ward of new orleans, etc.). But white folks have never been and can never be totally immune to paying a mortal cost for the choices they have made (witness hamas, witness 9/11, etc.).

For those of us white people who have made a conscious decision to try and break up the club of privilege, wealth and dehumanization that is white society, it is slightly easier to sit with the grim truth of hostility spiraling back towards white people. That is, it's easier for us (as opposed to the "average" white guy or gal) to accept distrust, bitterness and other wounded emotions as inevitable responses to "racism." And yet. it doesn't stop being hard for us to accept such emotions directed at us.

I think often of a story i read about greensboro, nc in 1968. After the national guard was sent in to crush black power organizing at A&T, residents in the black community stood along roadways and hurled stones at any passing car with white folks inside. The image is striking to me because it forces me to remember that i won't always have time to explain my good intentions or all the things i've done to stand against the tide of history.

I carry around with me - sometimes bouyantly, sometimes like a boulder chained to my ankle - the notion that honestly sharing myself with others will allow them to empathize with me and thus accept me as decent. The problem with this, of course, is that i will not always be asked. And furthermore, even if i insist on speaking the truth of my own experience, the other person may not be willing to listen. White people have insisted for generations that their "race" is more important than their commonalities, their humanity. We've done this often enough that some people believe us, and spit it right back in our faces. Why take the time to listen to the subtleties of our alienation or our spiritual impoverishment when whiteness is shrieking in all directions?

Still, someone needs to speak to the great loss we have experienced as a result of living as white people for generations - and who else could do it but us? Who else but us can make the demand to restore white people to the human family? Who else but us can release us from the straightjacket of lies that we have forced ourselves to wear for so long?

And, when we speak to these concerns, do we have a "right" to be heard by those who have been oppressed, enslaved and degraded by our actions? What "credit" do we get for finally coming to terms with the horrific mess we've made?

George Orwell writes,

"Perhaps this class-breaking business isn't so simple as it looked! On the contrary, it is a wild ride into the darkness, and it may be that at the end of it the smile will be on the face of the tiger. With loving though slightly patronising smiles we set out to greet our proletarian brothers, and behold! our proletarian brothers... are not asking for our greetings, they are asking us to commit suicide."

i feel as if i've been banging my head against the wall with this project over the last six or seven months. i force curtis to repeat himself again and again; what he says makes sense, but i can't make sense of it. somehow, i need to be told repeatedly what to do and i still don't really understand it - i can't translate words into action. but i feel like i'm getting closer...

tonight in conversation it came across to me clearly that i can't be the one who writes the plan. just like that. just so simple. "but that's what i know best!" i protest. i can think about things. i can offer ideas. why doesn't that count? the point is, it does count, but not towards dismantling white supremacy. i need to learn how to follow black leadership. how to follow - period. the planner leads, inspires, encourages, coalesces, etc. no more of that for me.

i had heard it said before that the underground railroad and SNCC freedom summer were the only times when white people have been able to do this. tonight i had it repeated a half dozen times. and, some clarifying details were added:

* SNCC (a group of less than 100 blacks) was only able to effectively lead a group of roughly 1,000 white volunteers because goodman, schwerner and cheney were killed at the beginning of the summer and so SNCC could say without exaggeration that failure to follow black leadership could get you killed.

* white folks were able to effectively do the underground railroad because they were not slaves and so could not run away themselves.

john brown - on the other hand - wrote himself a plan for how to liberate the slaves and set out to do it. he didn't go to a group of rebel slaves or even rebel free blacks and ask how he could help end slavery. sounds like a simple critique, right? damn is that powerful and slippery the way it slides out of my focus all the time. how did i miss that in all the studying of john brown i've done?

well, in fact it's quite simple. all the projects i've been involved in to try and end racialism have been my own initiative. people would tell me, "you need to listen to this and that group and find out what their grievances are, etc." and i would just respond glibly and flatly, "no, i don't. i already know what i want to accomplish and the people who want to work with me on that, will." so my desire to carry out my own plans has blinded me from seeing the inherently white supremacist nature of that tendency, that desire, that "need" of mine.

ok, so now i have at least a computer screen as a witness: i'm throwing in the towel. from here forward, i don't write the plans, i implement them. let's see how well i can do with this.

if you see me slippin,' call me out...

and let's both remember:

"the rich are only defeated when running for their lives.
sad as this is, that is the way that humanity progresses.
the anniversary orators and the historians supply
the prose poetry and the flowers..."

- c.l.r. james

1.

in a northern city
statues commemorate the union dead
in a southern city
the confederate.
how much of a difference is this?
martin luther king claims that
the negro of 1963 understood the significance of
one hundred years since emancipation.
if so, how far are we from that consciousness?
four decades?
two generations?
further?

2.

a generation of children
tear one another to shreds
driven by drugs, diamonds,
and a willing 'market' economy.
in africa, we call that 'civil war.'
in this country, we call it 'gang violence.'
what's the distinction?
the africans have:
more resources
more money changing hands &
more deaths.
in short, they're doing a better job
at a horrible thing.

3.

there is this:
the offspring of european settlers in africa
were honest
in calling africa their home.
it was, in the truth of it,
a painful contradiction.
to be in a place you clearly don't belong
- resting on a history of theft and murder-
and yet, unmistakably,
grounded.

4.

to go a place
solely to help
is the first mistake.
among mistakes, there are worse.
but self-proclaimed helpfulness
is one of the harder errors
to admit to.

5.

can a horror be stopped
by speaking of it more clearly,
more accurately?
there seems to be little evidence for that position.
still, the believers of this viewpoint
continue to push on
and proselytize,
to boot.

1.

in my parent's lifetime, my country has become an empire.
we have, once again,
taken over where the british left off.
as the sun sets on british dominance,
americans become the enforcers of submission
in an increasingly
rebellious
and unrepentant world.
men my father's age have made it their life's work
to do 'whatever is necessary'
to keep their bosses
boss of all.
their careers comprise a web of stories
so intricate and brutal that
it's yet to be told.
and i am a child of their aspirations,
and achievements.

2.

surviving the unraveling of
life-as-you-know-it
is an art.
you may know that people
have legitimate reasons to be furious
as a result of your actions,
and still you must set about to destroy them.
most us will never begin to comprehend
what has been required
to keep things the way they are.
our system has been imploding,
and assaulted from various directions
but still lands on its feet
due – in large part -
to the heartless perseverance of a small handful of mercenaries.

3.

in the moments when our struggles
bubble up and overflow
in dozens of places throughout the world at once
(which is, luckily, virtually always)
our rulers frequently know better than us
the connections between them.
for us, connecting to struggles internationally
is a strategic advantage.
for the powerful,
it's a strategic imperative.
a few good things can be said about marxism.
one is that they encouraged generations of thinkers
to consider “international solidarity.”

4.

each generation grows up
with the propaganda of their times,
and precious little else.
if we're lucky,
the generation that came before us will,
in re-evaluating their own lives,
tear cracks in the clean uniformity of our world.

October 18th, 1993:

"What were you thinking when you walked away?"
Silence.
"What the fuck was running through your mind?"
She turned away and glanced over at the closet. She pretended not to hear.
"Hey! You can't keep doing this over and over again! Running and running."
"Look, I've got enough problems without you butting into my life and starting a raucus."
She returned to her ritual of thumbing through the shirts hanging. She was in a hurry.
"All I need to know is what you could have possibly been thinking. Answer me why. Answer me how. HOW??"
This ends so loud that she drops the blue denim shirt she was preparing to wear and and jumps into the air. Regaining her composure, she answers, still immersed in the project of dressing rather than the actual conversation.
"That day is over. Thirteen years over. You keep making me live it. On and on and on. But I won't let you do it. I won't let you destroy me like that. God damn it! Don't you understand? I can't change that day. Leave me alone already."
"What the fuck? Are you so callous? Who is dead? Who is dead? What--"
As she leaves her room, she places a photo of a young boy face down on her dresser. For a moment something in it catches her eye, but quickly she becomes disgusted by what she sees, as if infected by a disease. She exits, almost running, and slams the front door behind her.

May 7th, 1974:

Terrence sits alone on the kitchen floor. He is playing with the camera his father received as a christmas present. He knows it makes neat images come out of it, but, despite lots of effort, he can't figure out how. Now 23 pieces. Now 29. His mother is entertaining friends. She told him, "run along nicely now, and don't get in any trouble." Terrence has forgotten all about that. That was well over an hour ago. It's 6:19pm. At six twenty five, the guests request a little more wine. "Just a second, I'll be right with you - don't have too much fun without me." It's loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. Now 34 pieces. The door swings open, high heels on linoleum. A careless humming meander. Crash. Glass flies across the kitchen floor. "Fuck! You little bastard! I'm gonna kill you! Oh, and look, you're playing with daddy's camera! You've ruined everything!" She begins scrambling on the ground after her horrified son: "Don't you run away from me you little shitface!" This would never have been a problem before 'Constantina' left. Open hand. Crash again. This time three bones shatter, matching the wine glasses. Blood with wine, one white linoleum. Terrence's world has only one color: black.

Terrence is three years old. This is life, and it has just begun.

June 21st, 1977:

"We are concerned about Terrence. We've noticed that very rarely do other children play with terrence. We think perhaps this is a sign of his intelligence, as we see him reading just about constantly. Nonetheless, we're not sure that Terrence can really reach his full potential when so socially isolated. We've tried various different things, but we've decided that this is probably not the right environment for his growth. We are sad to see him leave and we wish the best of luck in Terrence's future." This is the note the school left Terrence's mother when he was expelled from first grade.

Terrence has his own thoughts about his social progression; here's a note from his journal: "Sometimes I think about the other kids. I wonder why they act the way they do. They all seem so plastic, like GI Joe figurines. More silly are the teachers; they all pretend like everything is lots of fun and nothing ever goes wrong. They tell you constantly about all the fun you're having when all you're doing is learning stupid stuff like addition and gluing macaroni to paper plates for your parents. What a lie. I don't ever want to live like them..."

Tonight as he brushes his teeth, he notices the bruise over his left eye. His mother did not appreciate the fact that he was expelled.

January 4th, 1980:

Terrence's father visited last weekend. That was nice. His mother left him alone. They both did. Except for friday night when his mom made him dress up in his tuxedo: "Now, look nice for daddy. You don't want to make daddy mad, do you?" He shook his head. At 8:30 his father arrived, two hours late. Back from Bermuda. Strictly business, of course. He had a present for Terrence. Good thing, it's been six and a half years since they'd seen one another. Strictly business, of course. It was a camera. His very own. "Run along nicely now, and don't get in any trouble." He read the entire manual, cover to cover. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror for over an hour. He posed in every which direction, taking photos of himself. He took four rolls worth - all of himself.

March 7th, 1980:

Blood ran down Terrence's face. His white shirt was tattered and stained red throughout. Tears streaked down his face and he did his best to scream out,"Mommy I hate you! I hate you mommy!" Passersby only heard screaming. The neighbors were probably more curious than compassionate. He falls to the ground. His limp body battered yet again by the gravel of the driveway. His mother stands about nine feet away, in silent awe. She watches him as his body shivers from the torture of the brutality she has inflicted on him. She herself has about a dozen bottles of wine, all carefully displayed on the mantle. She is among the scene only in body. Her son is having that drained from him. As his strength begins to totally leave him, he only mouthes the words, "Mommy, mommy, why mommy? why?" She knows what he's saying. She knows he could survive with medical attention. It would be the seventeenth time the doctor would heal Terrence's wounds from "accidents." As he lays there, softly dying, she walks away, as if turning away from an empty street. His body convulses one last time and he is able to release one last plea for help. She enters the house and his body becomes numb. In two hours the police will find his body decaying, but they will never find his killer.

November 11th, 1994:

The room is quiet. On the dresser is a photograph of Terrence at age nine, a self-portrait. On the bed, his mother is in the fetal position, in tears. She is screaming to an empty room: "I thought nothing that day. I was dead for fourteen years. I am alive now, awakened by the memory of you. It's destroying me Terrence. I feel every blow. Fourteen years, Terrence. I feel every blow. I feel the blood drip down to my mouth. I feel my flesh fall away. I feel the tears well up inside me and explode in violent desparation. I feel your death Terrence. It has reincarnated me. You can rest in peace now. I will bleed for you. I will bleed for you..."

i laid a pillow on my bed.
i set books beside my pillow.
the space left for me was
uncannily the size of
the space left for me
for two years in the beds we shared in
a time that seems long ago.
Sweet time, holy time, sometimes.
Sometimes a time wrought with distress.

What I remember in this moment
is the way you massaged this aching back
Or you rubbed my short hair and tugged it.
I recall you laughing in my ear.
I recall singing in the dark with you.

I said things then, like,
"Remind me to do this or that in the morning."
You replied things like,
"Okay."
And i would ask silly things, like,
"Promise?"
You replied sensible things, like,
"I'll try. I love you."

Till the last, I drank your scent like ambrosia;
Till the last it felt sacred to be held by you.
I regret only
I didn't hold you as much.

I dreamt last night
a familiar story.
I was in bed with you
and She lay between us.
She was Anyone and She was my friend.
Through the dream more and more
Was asked of me.
Herculean emotional tasks
being a sister to her and an ex-lover to you.
Struggling through impossible cirumstances
I had questions for you.
Why was this happening?
Why couldn't we all be happy, not just two at a time?
Was i also your sister, or just your ex-lover?
and, now, i want to ask,
Why am i still dreaming this story?

But what i remember in this moment
is that you held my shaking, crying
body
And you stroked my trembling skin
till i was still.
I reached out my cupped hands
to show you a particle of hope
And it flooded our dreams with joy.
Exhausted, there was nothing left to do
But sleep soundly.

I recall this vividly.
Our bodies made
insurpassable harmony, always.
The sharp sweet expression
of unpeeling an orange.
Dolphins breaking the air.
Seeds coupling with the soil.
We made the heat of a new star, birthed.
We crowded the night above us
with flying violins.

I am determinedly far away and
that time seems long ago.
You and I speak rarely
but i want to ask a favor.
Remind me to remember in the morning.
Okay.
Promise?

I draw close to my stack of books
and sleep soundly.
That is all there is left to do.