A prompt & a pearl: Week 7
A writing prompt and bit of writing advice/insight once a week in 2024
I know racism is insidious pero, my word, it doesn’t fail to shock me when I am struck by it, when someone treats me/speaks to me in a manner that reeks of white privilege, implicit racial bias, racism. In the past I have been shocked into silence.
When I was a kid, if I said something my mother didn’t like, that pissed her off in some way, she swung, her hand landing hard on my face, leg, arm, back. The spot remained red for hours. Sometimes an angry welt would rise. If her hand landed on my long hair, she yanked it so I knew what whiplash was long before I had the vocabulary for it.
It took me a long time, so many slaps, grabs and yanks, to learn to be quiet, bite my tongue, swallow the acrid taste that burned my tongue. I’ve carried this my whole 48 years of life. Even in moments when I have spoken up, I’ve relived those welts and burns. I have been afraid…
Here’s the thing: My silence did not protect me. It never has. It never will.
This week I’ve been dealing with a racist white person and their friend who defended them. Listen: When you are complicit, you too are guilty of racism. These white folks have the audacity (or should I say caucasity) to try to tell me, a Black and Indigenous woman (Afro-Indígena), what racism is and isn’t. I talked back. I defended myself. I said something. And I’m not sorry.
Of course I’m labeled an angry brown woman. Unprofessional. Self-absorbed. One even had the gall to tell me my behavior is like that of a white woman. (Insert loud, open mouthed cackle here.)
As if my silence would have saved me from this onslaught.
I turn to Audre Lorde at times like this:
My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking. (excerpted from “The Transformation of Silence into Language & Action” by Audre Lorde)
Fear has been a vise grip around my neck. Fear has crushed my larynx. Fear has left me bug eyed and trembling. But that version of Vanessa is gone. I will stand up for what I think is right. I will stand up for and protect myself. In moments when fear is constricting my throat, when I worry about the repercussions, what I will lose, who I will lose, how I will lose, I remind myself: Silence has not and will never protect me.
So I speak, I say my piece, I call a racist a racist. Let them swallow and carry their rage. I won’t carry it for them. Neither should you.
I’m still chewing on a clip I saw of Byron Allen in conversation with Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law Stephanie Robinson, where Allen shared thoughts on the numerous racial barriers he’s had to deal with in his journey to becoming the head of what’s touted as “the most successful Black-owned media group in history, with ownership of the Weather Channel as well as 36 ABC, CBS, and Fox television stations.” Allen’s current bid for the Denver Broncos could make him the first Black owner of an NFL team.
Allen speaks of the pattern of the four D’s: “They dismiss you, they discredit you when you speak up, they demonize you, and they destroy you. They perfected that on women: She’s a witch, burn her at the stake.’ Then they dropped it on Black people. That’s the matrix in which we live.”
These four D’s have been acted out on me by two white folks, and it all started because I failed to put a trigger warning on two readings. I own my oversight, but that’s the only thing I did wrong. When I refused to kowtow, when I didn’t give them power, when I said “No” when they insisted I remove the essays from my reading list (la gente si tiene cojones), they tried to do what a black writer who was also present and witnessed it all, dubbed a metaphorical lynching. Y’all they’re even trying the respectability politics bs, saying I curse too much, I’m too much this and too much that, and I am therefore unprofessional. As if we don’t already know that respectability politics is rooted in racism.
To this I say, unequivocally, with no tremor in my voice or hesitation: Fuck You. How’s that?
This incident, my fury and my middle-finger-in-the-air-screaming-I-don’t-care, inspired this week’s prompt.
The Prompt
Write about a time you were silenced. What happened? What did you do in turn? Did you internalize it? Did you write it down? Talk to a friend? Did you let it sit in your maw and grind down on it, causing you damage? What do you wish you’d done differently ? What would have you done the same?
The Pearl
I used to think artists were somehow better people, more enlightened. How could your serrated edges not be smoothed, your bias checked, your jaw unclenched when creating art? Isn’t art a conversation with the divine? Doesn’t this mean artists are close(r) to God? Let me tell you, I was so wrong about this.
You are still dealing with humans with their own beauty and rot. Remember that and act accordingly. And don’t let anyone fuck with you. And definitely don’t let them silence you.
And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraidSo it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.(excerpted from Litany of Survival by Audre Lorde)
Se me cuidan,
Vanessa
Thank you for giving words to our experiences. People say there is no I in team? There is no I in FU either. Keep doing you. You are a treasure . Gracias. k Dios te bendiga
I'm always stunned when I say something about a racist thing I've witnessed or happened to me and the person I tell about it just acts uncomfortable and embarrassed, as if I just peed on their carpet. It's their silence that freaks me out. Like, they are trying to pretend I didn't just say what I said, and gaslight me into wondering if I said it, or if I imagined what I told them about. Even worse is when it's my own family doing this. I'm multiracial (white father, self-hating afro-latine-indigenous-denying "mestiza" mother), and as you can imagine, it's complicated.