I, unlike Jake Gyllenhaal, am conflicted (I think)
I’m toeing this impossible line between being content with mediocrity, living a sub-par but average life in which standing in line at Whole Foods would be my largest inconvenience, bypassing the racial aggression and commentary on my sexual identity. The other side of that invisible line is the life I’m living. But in this bland world, colored with sepia tones, I would hold no expectations of anyone, about anything, and would wear the same Oak NYC tshirt I always do, never colored my keys, and never engage. I would fall down the rankings in my (redacted profession), but what is it like compared to living a life of never having to cauterize any ulcers?
I would be living the equivalent of eating a white person’s potato salad. I would listen to the same overrated Spotify playlists and I would never go out surfing at dawn in the Rockaways. I would like my friends a normal amount - in fact, they would be more like acquaintances - and if you never truly believe, if you never truly feel, you also never truly hurt, and are never truly involved. You can go about your day during the largest civil rights movement in US history (with international ramifications), and would basically be Andre in Get Out: I would be gently lulled into thinking everything is alright, until the flash of a camera would snap me out of this alternative timeline. What do we want, as BIPOCs? Do we want to be Andre, or do we want to be Chris? What is the role of those white people that aren’t even in our lives? And what should we be entitled to expect?
If you read this blog you know I have been angry on the regular (here, here, here, heeeere) about the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal, your woke bae, is in fact neither woke, nor a desirable bae for those of us for whom wealth and whiteness aren’t the norm and haven’t been since birth. Forty-four (44) days after the despicable and torturous murder of George Floyd, Jake Gyllenhaal has decided to do something. Actually, he isn’t doing anything himself, but he sent an email via his disturbingly named production company to highlight the work of a Black-owned and Black-operated small business in the city that he deserted. And somehow, this is supposed to make up for the fact that he has done a total of absolutely zero things during forty-four days, has remained absolutely silent, not even addressing his own industry in the movement. He could be perfectly quiet on the history of social justice, if he feels underequipped or undereducated, but he was blocks away when Michael B. Jordan called him and his ilk out. So he talked about Black farmers in upstate NY.
I have spoken about how exhausted I am. And that exhausted me, because at this point, I felt I was handed over a few leaves of an iceberg salad after starving for months, and I should be saying, “thank you, massa”. Well, fuck me, because this isn’t me. But boy oh boy do I sometimes wish that was me. I sometimes wish my ex boyfriend (remember dating men? lol) hadn’t left because my job was a permanent encroachment. I wish I could still skip on Thomas Street with my brother and brother-in-law after a fancy meal in Chelsea. I wish things were different, when my partner and I would spend raucous and raunchy nights on the rooftop at Output, gazing at the Manhattan lights in the distance. I wish all of these days were simple, but truth is, they were even more magnificent because everything else wasn’t. I was knee-deep - fuck, elbow-deep into horror all the time, when someone would grab my hand and say, have you ever listened to the lapping sound of the East River on the Two Bridges Park rocks?
What if Jake Gyllenhaal is just trying to restore normalcy?
What if in fact it makes things so, so much worse?
Supporting Black small businesses matters. It especially matters in a pandemic, that affects Black people disproportionately, but has also diminished their already fledging chances are making it through an economic depression. The best way to do that while going about your everyday life is to grab your coffee (with a mask) at a Black owned coffee shop, grab your lunch box to go (with a mask) at a Black owned restaurant, and stop at your local bodega (with a mask) to support any form of BIPOC and those threatened by ICE. Highlighting the work of a Black owned cooperative is great. The cooperative in question grows organic food, which is usually out of the reach of low income people, and can participate in the NYC school lunch program. All of this is great. All of this is necessary. All of this is part of what makes NYC great.
None of this sat well with me. Because highlighting this work could have been done anytime. It could have been done before the movement started, when the pandemic had already made the situation of NYC schoolchildren precarious. All of this could have been done at anytime. The tone of the email was joyful, the design colorful, and it felt like it was just a regular infomercial on the part of Nine Stories. Black joy is a form of resistance, you’ll tell me, and you’d be absolutely right. But this isn’t Black joy: it’s white people rejoicing at their own white idea to highlight Black folks, and did so for a split minute before returning to business as usual, making money off of others and never working, learning, growing, working on their shortcomings, or doing more significant things - like letting BIPOC take over their social media, instead of shooting an email to subscribers, or have entire IG live series (tattooer Grace Neutral has been doing amazing work by doing it every week on different issues and highlighting various non-profits). In short, I felt insulted. It felt like lip service. I felt like I had invited Nine Stories for a cookout and all they showed up with was a cheap bottle of wine, and just the one, even though the whole block was there. It didn’t feel they were engaging, or talking to communities. For someone in my (redacted profession) and as a founding member of a non-profit in my non-existent free time, that works around the clock and across timezones to register voters, filing complaints with AGs, and forcing UNHRC resolutions, I could have shot this email in my sleep. It required absolutely no bead of sweat on their brow, at a time when we need allies to shoulder the burden because we are fucking tired.
My friend Yves Mathieu, who happens to be on the cover of L’Officiel Italy this month because he’s a handsome motherfucker, has been traveling across the US for the best part of the last two months to attend every single protest in major cities, especially in places where the police department has been documented abusing protesters. He’s filmed, live; he’s been tear gassed; he’s been shot out with KIPs; he’s been arrested; and at times he dances, in the middle of a line of National Guard shields, and he’s screaming, galvanizing crowds, shouting the names of all the recent trans folks we’ve lost and the “suicides by hanging” we have seen. He is tireless, or at least this is the image he puts up. Because he is fucking tired. And while he calls me his “angel on earth”, there is no day in which I don’t worry about his safety. Right now, we are working in urgency, and if I had a table, I would have flipped it because I don’t give a bloody damn about Jake Gyllenhaal and Riva Marker’s apples.
For those of you who tell me I am ungrateful and that this project is worthwhile, I’ll refer you to the first paragraph. Yes, it absolutely is, in times of normalcy. It should be supported, not just now, but perenially. The issue here is that we have an emergency, and we have wealthy white people on our hands who are doing not just the bare minimum, but are so much below the standard of what is required in existing in a society that we are numb to the crumbs they throw to the movement. Showing our gratitude for this is being thankful to have one loaf of bread a month during a famine. I don’t want crumbs. I want a sit at the top of the goddamn table. It’s trying to quench a thirst that is so urgent, so pressing, and so dependent on life and death, with dipping lips in tepid water. It’s not doing it. We should, of course, support this collective once we have achieved everything else that can allow them to thrive in a world where those collectives will be normalized. But releasing this on the day that ICE is changing the laws to deport people on student visas? When I mentioned life or death, did I stutter?
As I was telling my lovely and incredible friend Shelley, who is doing so much while being in Australia and still more informed than the Nine Stories team, here it is. Beware. This is non exhaustive:
Waiters being disproportionately exposed to covid as states reopen. Waiters depending on reopening because there is no minimim wage. Rubber bullets. Tear gas. Killing rates. Primary elections. Non-profits being criminalized. Bail funds. White privilege. White history. Rewriting historical narratives. Defunding and disbanding police departments. The investigation into Bill Barr. The UNHRC resolution on the US systemic failures on racial discrimination. Conversations on colorism and racism. Death rates during the pandemic. Overcrowded prisons. Elijah McClain. White supremacists. Voter suppression. Lynchings. Pride. Marsha P. Johnson. Black theater. Minneapolis. UNCERD review. Oscars So White. Michael B. Jordan. 13th Amendment. Black trans lives. Trans rights. Ahmaud Arbery. DC Lewis List. NYPD refusal to discipline. Elijah McClain’s funeral. Suspension of immigration visas. ICE raids. ICE detention facilities. Suspension of habeas corpus rights in NYS. Pentagon opposition to the White House. Holding rallies on native land. Deployment of white militias.
All of this, we deal with it everyday. All of this is directly part of my (redacted profession). And unless we fix this first, we won’t be able to decide whether organic food is a right or something we should allow better access to. There is still a pandemic, and there’s a revolution in the middle of it. I am directly challenging Jake Gyllenhaal to give my non-profit access to his instagram for one day so we can talk about our work and so we can have an open conversation with him about his silence. Find me, Jake. Let’s fix this. You obviously don’t know how. Fortunately, I do. Hit the road Jack, or don’t you come back no more.
