“We don’t integrate. We recreate.”
Yara Shahidi.
ON RIOTS, INTEGRATION, RESPECTABILITY POLITICS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF IT ALL
Since MLK day just passed and we were discussing the differences between BLM and the civil rights movement, being the inclusion of all types of Black people and the exclusion of respectability politics and patriarchy, I’ve been thinking about if and how Black people have been so-called integrated into America. It seems that there is a push to become like white people as if they are the pillar of humanity and those who don’t are marginalized and othered in ways that create the racial disparities we still see today (health, housing, state violence, the demonization of our youth, etc.). The gag is, even if you do, you’ll still be subject to many of those things.
Angela Davis said it best: “I have a hard time accepting diversity as justice. Diversity is a corporate strategy...Diversity without structural transformation simply brings those who were previously excluded into a system as racist and as misogynistic as it was before.” It seems to me that the best route is that of BLM: to create a separate genre of being as Audre Lorde suggests. Malcolm X said this is preferred "so [we] can develop [our] character and [our] culture in accord with [our] own nature.”
“I’ve come upon something that disturbs me deeply. We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know we will win, but I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house. I’m afraid that America has lost the moral vision she may have had, and I’m afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensure that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears the soul of this nation. I fear I am integrating my people into a burning house. [We should,] become the firemen. Let us not stand by and let the house burn.”
-MLK
“And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.”
-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
“O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
...
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be!
-Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again
“I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense, our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. ”
-MLK
It is sad that some of what was said about the US decades ago is still true of today.
"You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father's time, my mother's time. My uncle's time. My brother's and sister's time. My niece's and my nephew's time. How much more time do you want for your...'progress'?"
-James Baldwin