survival: what do it mean and for who

first this, written by brilliant black feminist Alexis, founder of brokenbeautifulpress and all around bad-ass: Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing.

this isn't going to be a commentary on her post. i loved it. def had me thinking about motherhood (which is something im deeply interested and as i get older i find im thinking about it in more nuanced ways, blog post for another day) and my own mother and her struggles (n the nature of shared struggle. sometimes me and her aren't always about our own struggles because we're so busy being strong for each other. what does that do to our relationship? blog post for another day.)

this is in response to a comment on the article made by brilliantmind/brilliantpoet/mydearfriend Rickey. long story short, a mutal friend posted Alexis's blog in a note, tagged us. at one point in his comment Rickey asked quote

"Although something else to think about it what "black mother" is this article referring to? I heard "lower-to-working class black mother." I'm not sure if I hear "middle-to-upper class black mother.""

mmmmm. which just got me going. i left a long ass comment is response then decided to turn it into a blog. (so alot of this is just copy and paste but hey, no need to make my fingers all tired lol)


mmkay.


so. at one point in her blog Alexis says "We are people of color. The whole system wake up every day trying to exterminate our bodies and our spirits. Our very survival is queer."

which is so powerful, right? esp if we use Michael Warner's idea of "queer" = not just opposing heteronormativity, but normativity itself.

the norm says we weren't meant to survive. and by we, i mean black/colored/queer folk. we weren't supposed to make it. we still aren't. we know this.

what i've been thinking about is just how class plays a role in the survival of black folks. esp in how black folks of a certain class talk about these issues of survival. esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it.

(and hey. i come from a middle class background, born and raised in a predominately black southern city. i attended undergrad at a northern, private, "elite" liberal arts college, and im working on a masters degree at a public, southern university with it's own "elite" history. this is my context. this is one of the places that i write from, and this is the primary place i am writing from in this post. back to)

esp how those of us in the academy or thereabouts talk about it. how we may unconsciously appropriate the struggles of working class folks as we explore/talk about/define being black, and the struggles thereof.

to some degree this is understandable. we spend our time reading a loooooot of revisionary texts. and since the vision that these texts are re-ing is a white middle-to-upper class hetero one, we spend a lot of time reading about working class queer colored people, understanding and adopting their/our struggle. and sometimes in the name of solidarity, we dont reeaallly interrogate our own subjectivity in the midst of all this resistance and revolution.

(following examples not meant to call anyone on the carpet hence no names because while i dont agree i think i understand where they coming from)

for example, there's this one young black college educated woman i know. she posted a link to this on her FB: LA Rep. Considering Plan to Pay Poor Women $1000 to Have Tubes Tied, along with an all caps angry note about the government wants to sterilize her.

while yes this definitely warrants anger (like theFUCK????? on SO many levels), and yes an injury to one is an injury to all in that these ideas of black women are applied to our bodies across the board regardless of class or achievement (we can look at the media reaction to michelle obama to see that), at the same i thought she was kinda doin a little dance of misappropriation there because of the following: she didn't live in louisiana nor was she from louisiana, she didn't come from a working class background, she wasn't in any kinda situation that might make make her go, hmm that $1000 might be fuckin worth it, she wasn't in any kind of situation where she might have to make that choice. it was her, but it wasn't HER they want(ed) to sterilize.

and in a way she performed a kind of erasure. by saying HEY look at what they are trying to do to ME, ME ME, as opposed to saying HEY look at what they're trying to do to THEM, and finding another way to show the connections between THEM and US without making it all about ME.

(i feel like a race traitor even typing this. and what does that say? somehow i got it in my head that it's a betryal to point out that black folk aint monolithic. who told me that? where'd i pick up that idea?)

im not saying that those of a certain class shouldn't concern themselves with the issues of another class, esp cause in certain instances race can blur class lines. but as rickey pointed out, at certain points this article seemed to be speaking more to the lived realities of working class black mothers. which is fine. there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

what we're talking about is survival. and how folks of color survive.

i guess what i'm wondering is if we took into account the lived realities of middle and upper class black women? how would the notion of "survival" change? how would the notion of struggle change?

cause the struggle isn't always about having to hustle to put food on the table. or about some white govmnt man trying to keep you from making babies. sometimes struggle looks like the only black face in the classroom tensing up when someone mentions hip hop and everyone either looks at her or tries not to look at her. and feeling silly/ashamed about feeling stressed because she's got food to eat and a place to stay and things could be much worse. and she feels silly because she's been told by her mom by her girlfriend who's pregnant and working two jobs lil wayne and by that book on black feminist politics that TEH STRUGGLE(tm) looks like THIS: _______ and since ______ dont look nothing like what she's going through then she's not actually struggling, so there's nothing to survive, only to enjoy.

obviously this is personal. but isn't it always, especially the political?

i guess what i am asking for is an interrogation into the notion of "survival," and by extension, "teh struggle" as it applies to colored folks, taking into account issues of class, gender, sexuality, place, etc. multiple subjectivities. what does survival look like for Whitley (yes, THAT whitley. i went there. dont you love it.)? or for, hell, michelle obama? or for a black middle class family in Salt Lake City?

multiplicity of subjectivities. multiplicity of struggle. multiple ways to surivive. i want to know what they look like.