Listen.
"It is wrenching to know that the occasion for the renewed interest in your work is the murders of black people and the subsequent “listening and learning” of white people." - Yaa Gyasi
"It is wrenching to know that the occasion for the renewed interest in your work is the murders of black people and the subsequent “listening and learning” of white people." - Yaa Gyasi
https://twitter.com/ProfSunnySingh/status/1373214727359377408
"So many of the writers of colour that I know have had white people treat their work as though it were a kind of medicine. Something they have to swallow in order to improve their condition, but they don’t really want it, they don’t really enjoy it, ..." - Yaa Gyasi
" There’s so much slippage between “please tell me what I’m doing wrong” and “please tell me that I’ve done nothing wrong”. The suddenness and intensity of the desperation to be seen as being “good” run completely counter to how deeply entrenched, how very old the problems are."
I have felt very quiet of late, like I have nothing more to say and I think it has to do with the ongoing cycles of antiracism hype which inevitably follow public acts of violence against BIPOC. It's a cycle that serves capitalism but leaves justice in the dust.
It has to do with my role in those cycles of antiracism hype. Suddenly my voice holds a new currency and that can feel kinda icky, tbh. The hierarchies of experience relate to which pain sells best and when. I'm not a bestselling author. I'm a facilitator/educator.
Gyasi's essay gets at this conundrum of being Black and wanting to be heard yet not exclusively in the service of white learning in search of absolution. It's a lot for all of us to sit with. But sit with it and act on it, we must. theguardian.com/books/2021/mar…
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