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The dissonance between Black women celebrating KH and Tamil women celebrating KH is so vastly absurd. On one side, debates about Black representation in carceral state apparatuses & on the other... idli-dosai, chithis, paavadai, Besant Nagar.
Muting is not helping.
https://twitter.com/vandana_menon/status/1296281909866176518
Muting is not helping.
https://twitter.com/vandana_menon/status/1296281909866176518
Brahmin women's representational politics -- even in the diaspora -- are so trapped in this vocabulary of cultural visibility rather than discussions of material political power. As long as the conversation is limited to how we perform femininity...
...through what we cook, what we wear, what we call each other, what we look like, where we live, it becomes easy to mask what our relationship is to the state, to the political economy, to imperialism... basically, to material power.
I do think KH's identity is complex, but her relationship with America's carceral state, not so much. Black commentators are confronting what the material consequences of a Biden-Harris ticket look like with such honesty. If this "allyship" politics has to mean something...
... can Tamil Brahmin/dominant-caste women confront those material consequences with similar honesty? Or will they continue to seek validation in these utterly vapid cultural objects & ignore what the Biden-Harris ticket materially advocates?
