Mycelium of Truth and Action
This post is inspired by and contains an excerpt from James Baldwin’s Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes
17 bodies in a nursing home...rotting and waiting to be valuable enough to be found
Caged lungs breathing coronavirus soaked air
A car filled to the brim, their shelter in place...until the tow truck comes
Black bodies dying at double the rate because anti-Blackness is a preexisting condition
Undocumented bodies waiting for release or relief that won’t come in the form of a government check
Healthcare workers sacrificed on the altar of profit and called heroes to cover the shame
Armed White men and women left alone by police to park themselves in front of government buildings to demand haircuts rather than dollars that might also reach Black and Brown hands
Unarmed uprisers, mostly young, mostly Black and Brown choking on tear gas and fleeing rubber bullets
Breonna Taylor waking to a real life night terror in her home
Ahmaud Arbery killed by two White men’s imagination and vigilantism
George Floyd suffocating from the weight of the state on his neck
Christian Cooper making a simple request of a White woman and her deadly response
Our collective human body is absorbing and metabolizing the death, sickness, pain and suffering amplifying around us. Though this ambient trauma is shared, the material impacts of this trauma is not. Disproportionately and by design, it is harming and killing those of us already surviving under the traumatizing conditions of White supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy.
We must remember that harm, dehumanization and death are products of these systems, and they are not the only products. Grotesque concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few and the illusion of “safety” and “advancement” for those in White bodies, males bodies, able bodies and neurotypical bodies are the primary aims of these webs of exploitation and erasure. As a result, we are seeing and will continue to see historically constituted patterns emerge in the wake of our current moment. We know that the material and psychological beneficiaries of these systems will recast questioning and disruption to their status and the status quo as a threat to their safety and use that as an excuse to ramp up their atrocities.
They will increase state violence against Black communities and call it “public safety”
They will double down on a profit driven health-care system and make callous calculations about whose life is disposable
They will enact their dehumanizing immigration policies with the cover of protecting health
They will count on us being distracted and will stealthily erode civil and human rights while we sleep
They will make workers beg to come back to their underpaid and unsafe jobs without benefits and expect them to be grateful when they do
They will deny the importance of “women’s work” and bail out big, male-led corporations
They are us. We are them. I am they. Unless I choose to be otherwise.
When we are conditioned to believe that comfort is our birthright, discomfort will be felt as trauma. And we know that when we are afraid, many of us will abandon our values and sense of possibility for the easiest and quickest solution. We also know that in our current reality, the easiest and quickest solution will almost certainly require the exploitation and sacrifice of our most vulnerable human siblings.
I believe it is a critical act of collective solidarity to be clear about where we stand in relationship to these interlocking systems and act accordingly. But how? What will it take for us to step into that radical honesty? What should it look like for organizations and communities to both respond to the physical and material needs of those in crisis and provide space for others to make meaning of their anxiety and discomfort - without equating the two? The differences matter. And how we talk about those differences matter.
Which leads me to wonder, as James Baldwin wondered in his 1966 essay, Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes how families, communities and organizations are talking with one another about what is happening all around us. In 1966, the United States was inside another moment of both trauma and disruption to the status quo. Unnecessary loss of life, pain and suffering abounded, and those with power recast the threat to their status as victimhood. Have we, as White folks, learned enough since then to make different choices now? More importantly, to be different now?
I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED, AND IT IS NOT A PLEASANT wonder, just what White Americans talk about with one another. I wonder this because they do not, after all, seem to find very much to say to me, and I concluded long ago that they found the color of my skin inhibitory, This color seems to operate as a most disagreeable mirror, and a great deal of one’s energy is expended in reassuring White Americans that they do not see what they see. This is utterly futile, of course, since they do see what they see. And what they see is an appallingly oppressive and bloody history, known all over the world. What they see is a disastrous, continuing, present, condition which menaces them, and for which they bear an inescapable responsibility. But since, in the main, they appear to lack the energy to change this condition, they would rather not be reminded of it. Does this mean that, in their conversations with one another, they merely make reassuring sounds? It scarcely seems possible, and yet, on the other hand, it seems all too likely.
Whatever they bring to one another, it is certainly not freedom from guilt.
The guilt remains, more deeply rooted, more securely lodged, than the oldest of old trees; and it can be unutterably exhausting to deal with people who, with a really dazzling ingenuity, a tireless agility, are perpetually defending themselves against charges which one has not made. One does not have to make them. The record is there for all to read. It resounds all over the world. It might as well be written in the sky.
Now, if I, as a Black man, profoundly believe that I deserve my history and deserve to be treated as I am, then I must also, fatally, believe that White people deserve their history and deserve the power and the glory which their testimony and the evidence of my own senses assure me that they have. And if Black people fall into this trap, the trap of believing that they deserve their fate, White people fall into the yet more stunning and intricate trap of believing that they deserve their fate, and their comparative safety; and that Black people, therefore, need only do as White people have done to rise to where White people now are. But this simply cannot be said, not only for reasons of politeness or charity, but also because White people carry in them a carefully muffled fear that Black people long to do to others what has been done to them. Moreover, the history of White people has led them to a fearful, baffling place where they have begun to lose touch with reality-to lose touch, that is, with themselves–and where they certainly are not happy. They do not know how this came about; they do not dare examine how this came about. On the one hand, they can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession-a cry for help and healing, which is really, I think, the basis of all dialogues-and, on the other hand, the Black man can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession which, fatally, contains an accusation. And yet, if we cannot do this, each of us will perish in those traps in which we have been struggling for so long.
- James Baldwin, 1966
One of the strategies utilized in racial justice work is racial affinity groups, or caucuses. Having its roots in community organizing as a way for marginalized groups to come together and organize for political and social visibility and power, these groups are becoming more common in spaces outside of community organizing. Depending on who you ask, the idea of separating by race, even for a temporary amount of time, stirs up strong responses. Especially to the idea of leaving White folks alone with one another. Will we, as Baldwin wonders, merely make “reassuring sounds”? Will White affinity groups reinforce our deeply rooted guilt so that we keep digging deeper into the earth, cementing us in place and hoarding whatever resources are within reach? Or can affinity based work support us in transforming how we are in relationship to each other? Can we learn, through being together differently, how to reach out for the forest around us, to risk redistributing our reserves in order to create a stronger network of support? Will we invite the mycelium of truth and action to transform our toxic history into nutrients for a collective future?
Of course, there is not a clear answer. I have seen affinity based work support radical transformation and I have seen it used in a way that reinforced toxic culture inside of an organization. It is not work to be done without intention. The dialogue that Baldwin talks about at the end. The one that contains the “personal confession that contains a cry for help” and “personal confession that contains an accusation” must be the goal of race-based affinity groups. We must be committed to doing the work separately that will prepare us for that level of honest, messy, dialogue together. If that is not the goal from the beginning, we risk, at best, wasting precious time and at worst, doing great harm.