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i'll add a few, since i was a part of the problem.
my friends and i frequently made jokes about hitler in german class. we thought it was hilarious that anyone like him could've possibly existed. it was "shock humor." we were wrong. https://twitter.com/miamobe/status/1272758722503286785
my friends and i frequently made jokes about hitler in german class. we thought it was hilarious that anyone like him could've possibly existed. it was "shock humor." we were wrong. https://twitter.com/miamobe/status/1272758722503286785
i overheard students, sometimes my own friends, casually dropping the n-word, calling women c***s or gay people f*gs.
i observed white students teasing their black classmates for their blackness. encouraging black students to reinforce damaging stereotypes.
i observed white students teasing their black classmates for their blackness. encouraging black students to reinforce damaging stereotypes.
and then, of course, there's me. what did i do? not a thing. i didn't spend my whole life in trenton, but the conditioning that leads one to follow the crowd was strong with me. i said and did things that i would beat my own ass for saying and doing now.
i remember harassing my little brother about the possibility that he might be gay. i remember embarassing him in front of all my friends about it. i had no understanding of what it meant to be gay. i just knew that a place like trenton doesn't like it, and we had to avoid it.
i remember coming up with very edgy jokes under the guise of subversive performance art in my high school band. we performed an entire set speaking to the crowd between songs in fake chinese. we turned a cut by detroit rapper big herk into a third wave ska song, lyrics and all.
none of that music is online anymore as far as i know. but if you were to find it, you'd hear my friends and i performing improvised songs in a variety of offensive accents and saying incredibly insensitive things. racist, sexist, anti-semitic.
we had a song called "zayde is gay (cut from the team)" in which our friend jon begins the song by screaming "ZAYDE'S A F*G"
nearly 10 years later, both zayde and i have finally come to terms with being queer.
nearly 10 years later, both zayde and i have finally come to terms with being queer.
the main concept of the band, whose name was "teh pioneerz fuh $um0 rightz," was a spoof of the civil rights movement focused on sumo wrestlers looking for employment.
that sounds stupid as fuck, and it is stupid as fuck, but it is still significant to this conversation.
that sounds stupid as fuck, and it is stupid as fuck, but it is still significant to this conversation.
when you bring up decently intelligent and creative people in a culture that doesn't acknowledge the basic rights of humanity, that intellect and creativity is expressed from a perspective of white supremacy.
and it's beyond past time to talk about that culture of white supremacy in the suburbs. especially as it concerns trenton, wyandotte, woodhaven, grosse ile, flat rock, etc.
it's beyond past time to examine the attitudes of white gen x-ers like my parents, who claim to remember the civil rights movement and a pre-riot detroit, yet seemed to have blacked out any memory of the events that set them in motion.
why, instead of recognizing their own community as an extension of the city and thus related to it, they view it as a shelter from what they consider the "filth and corruption" of the city. why they tell their children they'll die if they so much as park their car downtown.
i have so much more to say on this topic and i truly hope it reaches the right people. i've grown from my experiences but i am not about to erase the uncomfortable truths about where i come from and who i am.
in order to truly become an ally or a co-conspirator with a movement to abolish police, the prison-industrial complex, and achieve black and brown liberation, we must cast aside fragility about our own past actions and attitudes.
if my head's gotta be on the chopping block for real revolution to happen, so be it. it's not as if every institution we have hasn't been treating me better than other people since the day i was born.
