“Taxonomizing and vertical organizing is — as Césaire shows us — a prelude to killing.”- Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

For a movement to be a meaningful movement, it must remain elusive to the grasp of the state. Once it is within grasp, it has already been captured. Once it is captured, it is no longer capable of its original plan of disfiguring (or eliminating) social arrangements. Importantly, avoiding capture also means remaining outside of what is label-able. That is, a “successful” movement — if “success”/“failure” are appropriate measures — evades labeling because only the conquered are labeled. Therefore, the Movement for Black Lives is faulty on two accounts:

First, because it has been labeled, it has been captured. The original flame of radicality that sparked the constellation of black rebellions in the summer of 2020 has been dimmed, if not completely blown out (by the election of Joe Biden). Written on its tombstone is the “Movement for Black Lives.” The label is an enclosure that strangles the remaining oxygen so that ultimately all radical potential has been smothered and diffused. The capacity is still there, but the label obscures this because once it is labeled it is talked about in the past tense. The Movement for Black Lives is now simply the aftermath of what has previously occurred: rebellion.

Second, because the “Movement for Black Lives” obscures, it acts as the hegemonic political disposition of the mob of people called “black.” It’s almost as if this is the black humanism. This is what it means to be a reasonable black person, to be a proper black political subject: black homo politicus. It is assumed that every black person agrees that “black lives matter.” But because the Movement for Black Lives has been captured by the state — as evidenced by its labeling and, furthermore, by its nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize — it actually acts as the “black” arm of the state. Perhaps there’s another one of these arms named “Barack Obama,” who also was seen as starting a movement, in some sense. At the least he captured the black political imagination with such vitriol similar to the Black Lives Matter Movement/the Movement for Black Lives. He captured the Black imagination by showing us transcendence. The (rebellion labelled the) “Black Lives Matter Movement” captured it by emphasizing descent/dissent. This would explain his tenuous relationship with the Black Lives Matter Movement as he sought to maintain his monarchal reign on the black political imagination (Lang 2020), to give it hope, like a carrot at the end of a string. So in addition to being a dying flame, the Movement for Black Lives now determines the political agenda for the mob of people called black.

As previously mentioned, because the label forces dominant discourse to discuss black rebellion in the past tense, black rebellion now becomes antiquated, particularly within the context of liberalism’s aggressively linear time, wherein time forward signals evolution and positive growth away from an unevolved (violent) past. Rebellion is now obsolete. The Movement for Black Lives creates a “black humanism” — with a resulting political ontology — on behalf of Man. And since all humans need an opening to the transcendent (Eliade 34), black people now acting as humans, that is mimicking liberal HuManism with a black liberal HuManism, define their onto-political sacred based on this liberal humanism.

Through supporting the continued stabilization of the (anti-black) American empire (and world) by participating in state-sanctioned political processes, black people essentially are praying to a god that’s already cast them to hell (Hartman 118). In fact, he needs (enough of) us to stay in hell so that he knows he’s not hell. But importantly, he allows enough of us out to give the illusion that hell no longer exists or that it’s possible that one day everyone will ascend into the heavens. That one day will never actually come and, in fact, more are being captured and sentenced to burning for an eternity.

Cited: Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman, The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade, always indebted to Sylvia Wynter.

mad. mad. mad.

“Is abolition a synonym for love?”-Saidiya Hartman

“The impasse is reconciled by the mutual acceptance of risk and vulnerability that comes with interdependence and symbiosis.”-Zakiyyah Jackson

a gust of wind lifted the

veil from my eyes.

a commandment:

a comment on

“holy” matrimony wedding flesh

to flesh

as it’s “always” already been.

since time had 365 days,

to be specific.

white lace:

obscuring the radiance

of the black face,

of its ability to hold me

as we descend into chaos.

whispers making me

doubt i could love it.

white lace:

putting my faith in

preacherman to guide me

down the aisle.

preacherman takes

from my pockets,

breaks my spine

in two,

and calls that an election,

sometimes a concert.

if not the wind,

then who would’ve told me

that i could

love you?

that we could have it all,

and a bag of chips.

Provocation

i stopped saying

“black lives matter” because

i already knew

it was true,

and what was i trying

to prove?

when i go home

to my mother’s embrace

i know i’m alive and

that’s good enough

for me.

so, no, i don’t need you

to know that i breathe,

i just need you off

my neck.

it’s futile to put into words

what we know is true,

leaving us always begging

and receiving what we

didn’t ask for.

i can show you

better than i can tell you

that black lives matter,

and it’ll be something

you’ve never witnessed,

that doesn’t need your permission

to proliferate.

Recently, I attended Noname’s Book Club’s online discussion. The book was George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye, among one of the most radical books I’ve had the pleasure of reading, on par with Assata by Assata Shakur and Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton. In the book he essentially calls for the end of the United States, broadly, and property relations, specifically — among other things. In his analysis is a fundamental understanding that the end of property, as a concept, is necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) for black liberation. It’s not difficult to understand why when we think about the emergence of property in relation to the proliferation of anti-black chattel slavery. In short, slaves were property.

Therefore, when reparations — the monetary compensation of black people for their labor — was entertained as a viable solution to anti-blackness, I was taken aback. How could a conversation with such radical potential be reduced to a discussion of the liberatory potential of sheets of green paper with slave masters printed on them? How could George Jackson’s words be so disregarded and disrespected by some of those taking part in the conversation, even if unknowingly? One commenter replied that reparations would be “charity,” and they were met with contempt from the Book Club’s Facebook page, itself. “Charity” seems to be a harsh word, but how else do we describe black people putting their hand out to ask their master for money, whether they feel it’s rightfully theirs or not? Money itself predates our emancipation and regulated the trade of our ancestor’s bodies, so how can we ever have claim to it? Reparations, to me, is an attempt at humanizing our ancestors, of shifting them from being “slaves” to “enslaved people,” of capitalizing the “b” in “black.” But what is the utility in these conceptual and linguistic moves beyond making us feel better about our blackness? My ancestors were slaves. They were property. That is the reality of the situation, and that is a reality that we must contend with if we want to be as free as we say do.

Our ancestors seemed to have a fundamental understanding of what it meant to be human when they asked, following emancipation, for “forty acres and a mule.” That is, they understood the necessity of capital to live as a “proper” human. In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” Sylvia Wynter tells us that the dominant conception of the human that “overrepresents” itself and its desires as the only way to be in the world — what she calls “Man” — is currently the homo economicus: the “masterer of Natural Scarcity,” the “investor,” the “capital accumulator.” That is, to be “human” in the Western sense of both the word “human” and way of being “human,” is to own objects and use these objects to accumulate more capital. But how can an object own an object?

Arguably, slaves were still objects following the “non-event” of Emancipation, to borrow from Saidiya Hartman, if we think about the circumstances in which slaves were freed. They were a bargaining chip, an object used to preserve the United States. They were “transmogrified,” their being made into a “plastic” — terms used by Zakiyyah Jackson — to glue and repair the ripping seams of the United States. What I want to make clear is that it was the slave’s object status that even made it possible for their “freedom” to be actualized. They didn’t take freedom, it was granted. Because of their objecthood, Abraham Lincoln could “free” them, freedom being from the literal plantation, just for the world to become their plantation. Arguably, there is even less potential to escape from slave relations because the plantation is everywhere. It is the prison, it is the city, it is the university, it is everything. Therefore, we can characterize ourselves as what Anthony Bogues calls “living corpses,” the “walking dead” now seeking “life” in the form of capital (reparations), that which the homo economicus recognizes as the only form of life. But we are the very conditions for that capital. In our social death, we are the conditions for everyone else’s life.

So when the conversation of reparations comes up as a solution to anti-blackness, I immediately think of Black Wall Street, a bustling black Tulsa, Oklahoma community composed of black doctors, lawyers, and dentists. The average income was more than today’s minimum wage and the black dollar circulated for “almost a year before leaving”. These were black people attempting to live the good homo economicus life. The life of Man. And they were met with violence and the destruction of their community at the hands of a local white militia conspiring with the federal government to put these negroes “in their place.” That is, the place of death.

I also think about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Mike Brown, and Trayvon Martin, who were also killed by the State or white vigilantees seeking to keep niggas “in their place.” And I can’t help but think, the solution goes beyond money. How much money would it take for George Zimmerman to stop hunting Trayvon after the call operator told him so? How much money would it take for Derek Chauvin to stop basking in the pleasure of digging his knee into George’s neck? Does it cost to stop anti-black violence? Is there a price on black liberation from continued bodily harm? A harm that others seem to take pleasure in? Can we put a price tag on African families being ripped apart and shipped head to toe in wooden vessels? Of having their identities and cultures spat and shit on time and time again? Of spending day after agonizing day picking cotton in the southern United States, harvesting sugar cane and rice in the Caribbean and South America, and having their hands cut off for not collecting enough rubber in a day’s time, in parts of Africa? Will a piece of green paper with Benjamin Franklin’s ass really make me feel better? Really honor my ancestors?

I don’t have the solution to anti-blackness because we’ve committed our intellectual resources to a pipe dream. That being that the United States will say “I’m sorry.” What will that sorry do for me beyond permitting anti-black violence to remain, but with an “I O U” attached. In many ways, because of our social death, we remain politically illegible to others — speaking another language, but begging them to listen, to say three words. But if we can regain our bearings on an ever-shifting foundation, see eye-to-eye and speak mouth-to-mouth without regard for the non-black gaze, for what’s politically permissible according to Man, then perhaps black liberation can occur. I saw glimpses of it in between flickering flames inhaling the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct. I’ve seen glimpses in mutual aid funds. I’ve seen glimpses in the eyes of my friends reading Are Prisons Obsolete?, as we gathered to discuss every Sunday afternoon. Black liberation can be tomorrow, if we be it so.

In this moment, we also see a push for businesses to open to allow their capital-accumulating activities to continue because, again, capital is (social) “life,” even if it means the end of one’s biological life, the final end. Colleges are planning to open, though they know it is a risk to students, faculty, staff, essential workers, and the communities in which they are likely actively gentrifying. Perhaps capital isn’t the answer to any of our problems or what makes us live, a reality obscured by the insidious suicidal nature of Man’s anti-blackness.

Then, perhaps, the answer lies in blackness, in black people’s thought, in our illegible being.

then how can i?

when death-dealing technologies

and ideologies are (re)produced

with ease

stopping seems

to be another death,

maybe by choice this time.

i’m killing

time,

as time is killing

me

cities are killing fields. the same field

grandma tended to

and hers, and hers.

time kills them too.

the same field that

knows my name

though we’ve never met.

that knows our name before

we were (un)thought.

who slips into our grammar

and off our tongue to

remind us of its reach, of

who frames our speech.

that blackens and is blackened,

but remains intact,

for today.

“If being recognized as human offers no reprieve from ontologizing dominance and violence, then what might we gain from the rupture of “the human?” -Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

i stopped saying

“black lives matter” because

i already knew

it was true,

and what was i trying

to prove?

my mother’s embrace

told me i was alive and

that was good enough

for me.

so, no, i don’t need you to

know that i breathe,

i just need you

off my neck.

it’s futile to put into words

what we know is true,

leaving us always begging

and

receiving what we

didn’t ask for.

i can show you

better than i can tell you

that black lives matter,

and it’ll be something

you’ve never witnessed,

that doesn’t need your permission

to proliferate,

to be.

their way to the shores

of humanity.

trynna shuck and jive

at the feet of an order

they’re already holding in the palms of their hands,

or on their backs.

but yet holds them abject, as

objects outside

the picket fence or picket line

of life

allowed to live.

and my, oh my,

that’s no way to live.

Is this the point at which confidence is so affected by social media? We know that getting likes and retweets sends waves of dopamine throughout our brain. Is this the reason for the feel-goodness that we’re addicted to? Our thoughts have been validated and worthy of the attention of others. Two likes equals two people who enjoy my content and, by extension, maybe me. Five retweets: five people who think others need to see what I had to say. This may bring others to our front door willing to praise us and our thoughts, whether it’s our comedy, our opinions, or our accomplishments. We will be able to hoard our share of the internet social capital that now exists. A social capital that didn’t exist even twenty-five years ago.

Individual social capital is our worth and social standing in relation to others. It allows us to navigate certain social situations with relative ease, or with varying amounts of discomfort. Each of us has social capital to some degree and, to some extent, each of us fights for more or to retain the current amount that we have.

The only situation in which social capital seems to not be necessarily at the forefront are in close friendships and relationships. Here, one’s standing with others is not so much on the market. There is stability in removing a friendship from the “marketplace” of the thousands of interpersonal interactions and impersonal relationships we have on a daily basis. But how does one negotiate this transition from marketplace to a close relationship where social capital is no longer the bartering chip? How does one especially do this in a world of cancel culture that has proven pervasive in many supposed friendships? Cancel culture says “you have done something that I disapprove of and I have decided that you are not worthy of the energy to rebuild and maintain this bridge that connects us” and it allows one to drop out of a relationship like it was a business transaction. There is an underlying assumption that one should know that they are disposable and they should not say anything that could anger or upset a friend who is always capable of cancelling them. The same underlying assumption exists in “ghosting,” where a potential romantic partner determines that this business relationship is complete for one reason or another and drops out of the arrangement without warning. People become a product.

This cancel culture originated on the internet, specifically on Tumblr and Twitter, likely because there was an added air of anonymity because no one is expected to use their real name on these sites. Originally, cancel culture was directed towards celebrities who are, arguably, commodities. They brand themselves as products. The creation of hyper-celebrityism likely began with the rise of Paris Hilton and continued into internet “modernity” with the Kardashians who, instead of commodifying a talent or aspect of themselves, just commodified themselves to the fullest extent, sparking a rise in self-branding and self-promoting. Any time spent on Youtube will reveal this trend as thousands of people have begun getting paid simply for telling stories or living life on camera, but always in a way that presents their life as relatively perfect, because that is what people strive to be: perfect. People are consuming their goals and dreams. The bright side is the camera turns off, at least.

It gets even more extreme with the likes of Jovan Hill who streams nearly every vulnerable moment of his life, frequently crying on camera and divulging about his darkest thoughts. In one sense, it’s admirable because he is dispelling the notion that everyone has a good time all the time, which is often the facade of many on social media. On the other hand, one has to wonder if he has any close friends in real life (irl) that he can turn to in times of need. It appears that he just has his social media account that, in that moment, can provide a fraction of the attention he actually needs from a real person. But why doesn’t he have that real person?

Perhaps he can’t maintain non-virtual relationships. After all, they require real time and energy and even concentration. Before phones, if two friends were hanging out for an hour, that was an hour of time they spent together without distraction. If they wanted to communicate, they had to grab pen and paper and send a letter to one another. Even after the creation of phones but before text messaging, people had to get up to call one another and devote hours to that one single task. At their genesis, phones should have been defined as just a means to continuing a relationship and actually making it easier to develop close real relationships. The opposite occurred, however. Phones have become the relationship. We can text while also doing homework, watching television, and scrolling twitter, none of which we will devote full mental capacity to. Instead we split our brain and it’s power between separate tasks and each will take longer, eliminating the time we can spend indulging in soul-building work and hobbies with ourselves and others. Of course one has to mention the damaging effects of capitalism on individuals when mentioning this constant fracturing of time for the sake of productivity.

Perhaps the isolation that we feel as a result of social media is nothing more than a byproduct of our short attention span due to our increased use of technology coinciding with the intensifying of capitalism. We isolate ourselves and shout on Twitter or Facebook because it is easier than picking up the phone or walking to a friend’s house for a serious conversation with someone we feel may not even pay us the attention we need (remember the fear of cancel culture and the possibility that we may be deemed too much trouble for our worth). So we turn to social media because it allows us to experience the feeling we crave of interaction with others but without the lofty expectations of friendship. Other accounts can fall somewhere between strangers and close friends with no real label. Anything greater than a scroll is already surpassing expectations. A retweet or a like on a post about feelings you experience mean others must have, at some point, experienced something similar. This is the counseling where you’re told that you’re normal, that others have similar thoughts, and communities are built. So Twitter, is just a million people looking for that community to call their own, looking to fill a potentially self-induced void aided by the very technology that binds us. It’s a heroin dealer selling us the drugs that he told us we were nothing without, but now we are nothing without.