0:00:01.510,0:00:04.486
[ APPLAUSE, CHEERING... ]
0:00:15.861,0:00:23.711
[ GAIL DRAKES ] Right? Right? Yeah. [br]Let me just say, I agree completely.
0:00:23.711,0:00:25.554
I so approve that message.
0:00:25.554,0:00:26.864
[ LAUGHTER ]
0:00:26.864,0:00:28.528
So good afternoon.
0:00:28.528,0:00:30.910
I'd like to welcome you all [br]to this afternoon's event,
0:00:30.910,0:00:33.721
"Black Female Voices, Who is Listening?",
0:00:33.721,0:00:37.282
a public dialogue between bell hooks [br]and Melissa Harris-Perry,
0:00:37.282,0:00:42.365
the last public event in bell hooks' [br]week-long residency at The New School.
0:00:42.365,0:00:43.536
My name is Gail Drakes,
0:00:43.536,0:00:46.447
and I am the director of [br]the Office of Social Justice Initiatives,
0:00:46.447,0:00:49.492
housed within the Office of the Provost, [br]here in The New School.
0:00:49.492,0:00:52.123
The office seeks to both support and amplify
0:00:52.123,0:00:56.450
the efforts of those who are working throughout [br]the university to more fully realize
0:00:56.450,0:01:01.261
the New Schools progressive vision [br]as reflected in all aspects of our institution.
0:01:01.261,0:01:03.689
Having just arrived in The New School in August,
0:01:03.689,0:01:07.806
I can say that the bell hooks residency [br]has been a highlight in my time here.
0:01:07.806,0:01:11.306
And that is not only thanks to insights [br]shared at various events this week,
0:01:11.306,0:01:15.834
but because of the excitement it's generated [br]within the New School community.
0:01:15.834,0:01:19.262
In the week leading up to the residency, [br]it seemed that at any given moment,
0:01:19.262,0:01:22.110
just walking down the street, or entering an elevator,
0:01:22.110,0:01:27.448
you could very likely overhear conversations and[br]reflections amongst students, faculty, and staff,
0:01:27.448,0:01:29.622
on bell hooks and her work.
0:01:29.622,0:01:33.122
So it is my hope that while [br]this week-long residency is ending,
0:01:33.122,0:01:37.085
that those conversations and reflections [br]on the significance of bell hooks' work
0:01:37.085,0:01:40.770
can continue and expand here at The New School.
0:01:40.770,0:01:43.297
Of course, I would like to thank-[br]I would like us all to thank
0:01:43.297,0:01:46.506
those who made this event possible, [br]and the entire residency possible.
0:01:46.506,0:01:48.381
So please join me in a round of applause for
0:01:48.381,0:01:51.065
Stephanie Browner, Dean of Eugene Lang College,
0:01:51.065,0:01:57.510
Judy Pryor-Ramirez and Catherine Smith of Lang [br]Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice,
0:01:57.510,0:01:59.434
Heather O'Brien, assistant to the Dean,
0:01:59.434,0:02:03.625
and everyone at both Berea and the New School [br]who helped coordinate these events.
0:02:03.625,0:02:10.449
[ APPLAUSE ]
0:02:10.449,0:02:13.539
I do have to announce a small change [br]in our schedule.
0:02:13.539,0:02:17.406
Unfortunately, our guests do have [br]to leave immediately after the conversation,
0:02:17.406,0:02:20.618
and regret that they will not be able [br]to sign books as planned,
0:02:20.618,0:02:25.509
but I am very grateful that we're going [br]to still be able to enjoy the conversation.
0:02:25.509,0:02:27.585
So I have the honor of introducing these women,
0:02:27.585,0:02:31.809
who I know for so many of us in the room, [br]truly need no introduction.
0:02:31.809,0:02:37.562
But then I am still very pleased to offer this reminder [br]of the accomplishment of our guest today.
0:02:37.562,0:02:41.587
bell hooks is among the leading public intellectuals [br]of her generation.
0:02:41.587,0:02:47.671
Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1952, she grew [br]up in a working-class family with six siblings.
0:02:47.671,0:02:51.410
hooks received her B.A. [br]from Stanford University in 1973,
0:02:51.410,0:02:54.869
her M.A. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin,
0:02:54.869,0:02:59.344
and her Ph.D. in 1983 from the [br]University of California Santa Cruz,
0:02:59.344,0:03:02.338
with her dissertation on author Toni Morrison.
0:03:02.338,0:03:08.172
Her use of a pseudonym is intended to honor both[br]her grandmother, whose name she took,[br]& her mother.
0:03:08.172,0:03:13.624
While her name's unconventional lower-casing[br]signifies what is most important in her works--
0:03:13.624,0:03:18.135
"the substance of books, not who I am".
0:03:18.135,0:03:21.215
hooks' writing cover a broad range of topics
0:03:21.215,0:03:27.547
including teaching, gender, class, and race--[br]the idea of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
0:03:27.547,0:03:31.184
She strongly believes that these topics [br]cannot be dealt with separately,
0:03:31.184,0:03:34.388
but must be understood as interconnected and linked
0:03:34.388,0:03:38.741
in the production and perpetuation of [br]systems of oppression and class domination.
0:03:38.741,0:03:42.800
A prevalent topic in her most recent writing [br]is community and communion--
0:03:42.800,0:03:47.616
the ability of loving communities to overcome [br]race, class, and gender inequalities.
0:03:47.616,0:03:49.627
hooks has written over 30 books,
0:03:49.627,0:03:54.554
including personal memoirs, poetry collections, [br]and children's books,
0:03:54.554,0:03:57.425
as well as numerous scholarly [br]and mainstream articles.
0:03:57.425,0:04:02.139
She has taught in several colleges and universities,[br]lectured widely in public forums,
0:04:02.139,0:04:06.223
and appeared in several documentary films.
0:04:10.129,0:04:22.197
Mmm. [ LAUGHTER ] It's a bell hooks bio, a lot [br]going on there! I gotta hydrate! [LAUGHTER ]
0:04:22.197,0:04:29.084
Melissa Harris-Perry is the host of MSNBC's [br]Melissa Harris-Perry. [ CHEERING ]
0:04:29.084,0:04:32.681
The show airs on Saturdays and Sundays, [br]which some of you seem to know, probably,
0:04:32.681,0:04:35.849
from 10 AM to noon, Eastern time.
0:04:35.849,0:04:39.544
Harris-Perry is a professor of political science [br]at Tulane University,
0:04:39.544,0:04:41.302
where she's the founding director of
0:04:41.302,0:04:45.266
the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, [br]Race, & Politics In The South.
0:04:45.266,0:04:47.947
Harris-Perry is author of the well-received new book
0:04:47.947,0:04:53.820
"Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black[br]Women in America", published by Yale 2011,
0:04:53.820,0:04:55.415
and the award-winning text
0:04:55.415,0:05:00.157
"Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and[br]Black Political Thought",
0:05:00.157,0:05:03.034
published by Princeton University Press in 2004.
0:05:03.034,0:05:06.152
Professor Harris-Perry is a columnist for [br]The Nation Magazine,
0:05:06.152,0:05:09.985
where she writes a monthly column, [br]also titled "Sister Citizen".
0:05:09.985,0:05:12.331
She lives in New Orleans with her husband, [br]James Perry,
0:05:12.331,0:05:16.096
and is a mother of a terrific daughter, Parker.
0:05:16.096,0:05:20.728
While these bios offer considerable insight [br]into all they've done,
0:05:20.728,0:05:23.855
they can't fully represent the effect [br]they've had on so many.
0:05:23.855,0:05:27.562
Melissa Harris-Perry, Empress of Nerdland,
0:05:27.562,0:05:30.680
check out her #nerdland hashtag on Twitter [br]if you don't know what I mean,
0:05:30.680,0:05:35.498
has used her show on MSNBC [br]to expand the notion[br]of what is political,
0:05:35.498,0:05:41.169
and to amplify the voices of those we rarely, if ever, [br]see represented on cable news.
0:05:41.169,0:05:45.052
She brings the full force of her passion, personality, [br]and intellect to her show,
0:05:45.052,0:05:49.727
and changed what we thought was possible [br]on a cable news show.
0:05:49.727,0:05:55.095
And bell hooks. [ LAUGHING ]
0:05:55.095,0:06:00.797
There are many ways to determine the reach and [br]power of someone's work as a writer and academic.
0:06:00.797,0:06:07.117
Often we think about number of reviews, the number [br]of times one is cited by other scholars, etc.
0:06:07.117,0:06:09.948
But to understand the significance [br]of bell hooks' work,
0:06:09.948,0:06:14.981
you must think in terms of the number of [br]lives touched and world-views transformed.
0:06:14.981,0:06:19.205
While I navigate a society that offers [br]such a painfully narrow representation
0:06:19.205,0:06:21.664
of who can be a public intellectual,
0:06:21.664,0:06:24.945
I take heart and remember that [br]it has been bell hooks' books
0:06:24.945,0:06:29.673
that I've so often seen in the hands of Black Women, [br]as they would ride the bus home from work.
0:06:29.673,0:06:34.123
And it was the insight from her books, [br]dog-eared, re-read, and well-loved,
0:06:34.123,0:06:39.843
that helped inform the work of a generation of [br]cultural workers, activists, and feminist scholars,
0:06:39.843,0:06:42.224
who are now impressive in their own right.
0:06:42.224,0:06:46.753
So I just want to say, both personally [br]and on behalf of all of us assembled here,
0:06:46.753,0:06:52.071
a sincere thank you to both of these women [br]for all the ways in which they've served to help us
0:06:52.071,0:06:58.238
re-imagine what is possible at the intersection of [br]education, public life, and the struggle for freedom.
0:06:58.238,0:07:02.956
And thank you for giving us all the opportunity [br]to listen in to this conversation today.
0:07:02.956,0:07:06.627
Everyone, please help me welcome [br]bell hooks & Melissa Harris-Perry.
0:07:06.627,0:07:09.752
[ APPLAUSE & CHEERING... ]
0:07:27.133,0:07:31.556
[ bell hooks ] I'm not used to being [br]with a celebrity. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:07:31.556,0:07:34.550
[ Melissa Harris-Perry ] Oh! [ LAUGHTER ] Yeah, [br]I'm pretty sure in this crowd, you're the celebrity.
0:07:34.550,0:07:35.894
[ BOTH LAUGHING ]
0:07:35.894,0:07:37.974
So we were trying to figure out how to get started
0:07:37.974,0:07:43.868
and I wanted to start by just picking up on [br]that last insight about the fact that
0:07:43.868,0:07:47.895
none of us come to Black Feminism [br]except through you.
0:07:47.895,0:07:57.383
And it--I was just recently on the campus of [br]Bennett College, in Greensboro North Carolina,
0:07:57.383,0:07:59.426
and it was a kind of a wonderful moment like this,
0:07:59.426,0:08:04.096
where I rarely get a chance--where I was standing [br]and looking out over the chapel and...
0:08:04.096,0:08:10.513
and it was all African-American women and girls [br]and all of the faculty, in their academic regalia,
0:08:10.513,0:08:12.308
was kind of a great moment.
0:08:12.308,0:08:15.043
But one of the freshman came up to me afterward
0:08:15.043,0:08:18.376
and put her hand on my arm [br]and fairly breathlessly said,
0:08:18.376,0:08:21.534
[whispering] "Have you read bell hooks?"
0:08:21.856,0:08:33.959
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ] Um--[br]and I thought, "Uh-huh. Yep." [ LAUGHING ]
0:08:33.959,0:08:41.910
[ b.h. ] I am 20 years older than this baby up here, [br]and one of the things that I thought about is,
0:08:41.910,0:08:46.682
my early work focused so much [br]on the question of finding our voice.
0:08:46.682,0:08:51.383
And I was thinking about how [br]Melissa represents a generational shift,
0:08:51.383,0:09:00.776
because she has this whole national voice, [br]and so part of what we want to talk about is,
0:09:00.776,0:09:09.994
has there been a meaningful concrete change in how [br]we hear, think & feel about the Black Woman's voice.
0:09:09.994,0:09:16.633
Because many of you may have seen the show, [br]where Melissa is talking--was she an economist?
0:09:16.633,0:09:19.760
[ MHP ] Uh-huh.
0:09:19.760,0:09:22.093
[ b.h. ] And-- [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:09:22.093,0:09:25.350
[ MHP ] --Yes, I think that is the official title [br]of what Ms. [Angela] Mehta is.
0:09:25.350,0:09:29.847
[ b.h. ] --and I was so impressed myself. It was[br]it was like a love moment for me,
0:09:29.847,0:09:36.822
when Melissa just, you know, really boldly [br]put out there, what we know to be real and true.
0:09:36.822,0:09:44.208
And then I was so stunned when I kept hearing [br]from people, "Oh, you know, she really lost it."
0:09:44.208,0:09:47.544
And I thought, kept thinking, [br]"oh if this was Charlie Rose,
0:09:47.544,0:09:53.993
if this was any number of white men [br]who would just boldly speak their truths?"
0:09:53.993,0:09:56.328
She didn't raise her voice in any way.
0:09:56.328,0:10:00.546
There was for me no sense of aggression, so then
0:10:00.546,0:10:04.665
but once again she was turned into [br]the "Angry Black Woman"
0:10:04.665,0:10:07.510
not the Insightful Brilliant Black Woman
0:10:07.510,0:10:14.962
who just threw down in such a way [br]that it created a sense of awe.
0:10:14.962,0:10:20.491
And so that then gave me pause in thinking about [br]on one hand, has there been a shift,
0:10:20.491,0:10:28.648
or are we still pushing against a certain [br]characterization of the Black female voice?
0:10:28.648,0:10:32.994
[ MHP ] Am I meant to answer?
0:10:32.994,0:10:34.577
[ b.h. ] You're meant to discuss.
0:10:34.577,0:10:41.791
[ MHP ] I suppose yes. So I, you know,[br]I'm not sure how I ended up with a television show.
0:10:41.791,0:10:45.842
And I don't mean that to be joking. [br]I really am not quite sure how that happened.
0:10:45.842,0:10:54.480
Clearly it's about a set of very odd occurrences [br]that were part of this moment historically
0:10:54.480,0:10:58.602
where you end up with an African-American man [br]as president,
0:10:58.602,0:11:04.323
and you end up with the most popular commentator [br]on this African-American president
0:11:04.323,0:11:10.748
being a queer woman who is out and butch [br]when they don't overly make her up.
0:11:10.748,0:11:16.363
And you know, and so there's sort of a - there's sort [br]of a shift that occurs around representation,
0:11:16.363,0:11:18.374
and that shift that occurs around representation
0:11:18.374,0:11:22.707
occurs at the same time that there's a [br]profit motivation to get an audience, right?
0:11:22.707,0:11:28.869
So I just don't want to miss that [br]there's no moment in cable news
0:11:28.869,0:11:30.707
where people are making any kind of decision
0:11:30.707,0:11:36.807
that isn't based on a belief that there is audience [br]and income and something else out there.
0:11:36.807,0:11:39.446
So I assume--you know, you talk about [br]being twenty years younger
0:11:39.446,0:11:42.690
so I come of age in exactly the right moment.
0:11:42.690,0:11:44.839
In fact, I pretty regularly say
0:11:44.839,0:11:48.912
the smartest thing you could've ever done [br]was to have been born in the 70's.
0:11:48.912,0:11:50.864
If you were going to be born a Black girl,
0:11:50.864,0:11:55.668
to be born in the 70's meant being born [br]right at the end of that Civil Rights struggle,
0:11:55.668,0:11:58.326
but before the backlash got really ugly,
0:11:58.326,0:12:01.805
in the one moment when there were [br]integrated public schools in the South.
0:12:01.805,0:12:04.868
Just for that one second before white flight took all...
0:12:04.868,0:12:08.178
took all the resources out of the public schools [br]in the South
0:12:08.178,0:12:12.889
right at that moment so that when I graduate from [br]college, we're in an economic upswing & there are jobs.
0:12:12.889,0:12:16.166
When I finished the Ph.D., people are getting [br]multiple academic jobs.
0:12:16.166,0:12:24.012
Not like, searching for an adjunct position, [br]like there's just structurally a set of realities.
0:12:24.012,0:12:29.941
But I don't think any of those structural realities [br]that let a little moment like me come through
0:12:29.941,0:12:35.583
represents an American shift [br]in who we want to hear from.
0:12:35.583,0:12:40.293
[ b.h. ] All right. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:12:40.293,0:12:45.707
Whereas I feel, you know, enormously blessed.
0:12:45.707,0:12:48.913
I always get annoyed with my sister when she says [br]she's blessed and highly-favored,
0:12:48.913,0:12:56.566
but you know, I do want to say that I think of myself [br]as just of--you know,
0:12:56.566,0:13:03.555
Melissa has a mainstream image voice[br]that I came up really out of nowhere.
0:13:03.555,0:13:07.760
You know, little bell hooks writing "Ain't I a [br]Woman: Black Women in Feminism"
0:13:07.760,0:13:12.192
and that sometimes I do feel like, wow.
0:13:12.192,0:13:15.322
You know, there is this audience [br]that reads bell hooks,
0:13:15.322,0:13:19.300
and tells me how my work has affected their life.
0:13:19.300,0:13:24.822
And I think as a Black Woman writer, [br]that is so amazing.
0:13:24.822,0:13:26.532
I mean when I think about Audre Lorde,
0:13:26.532,0:13:28.334
when I think about Pat Parker,
0:13:28.334,0:13:30.745
when I think about Zora Neale Hurston,
0:13:30.745,0:13:33.164
I think about all the Black women writers.
0:13:33.164,0:13:36.926
I mean, my students already don't know [br]who Audre Lorde is.
0:13:36.926,0:13:38.850
They never knew who Pat was.
0:13:38.850,0:13:45.441
You know, and I think that to be a Black woman [br]writer of non-fiction, and to be read,
0:13:45.441,0:13:48.947
is to be blessed and highly-favored.
0:13:48.947,0:13:57.108
And so I think that just as there is space now [br]for your voice because it's a product.
0:13:57.108,0:14:03.029
It sells, it creates people like us running [br]to hear her and watch her.
0:14:03.029,0:14:06.407
There's also that other climate of people searching
0:14:06.407,0:14:15.889
for truly dissonant ways of thinking and being and[br]trying to carve out different ways to live our lives.
0:14:15.889,0:14:19.850
And I think that's especially a tension[br]for Black women,
0:14:19.850,0:14:27.629
because we haven't, as a group, [br]really carved out different ways to live our lives.
0:14:27.629,0:14:30.380
[ MHP ] I wanted to ask you about that a little bit
0:14:30.380,0:14:37.219
because there are things about the bizarro life [br]that I find myself living now,
0:14:37.219,0:14:43.743
that I sometimes feel as though I'm judging against [br]a set of Black Feminist Standards,
0:14:43.743,0:14:49.689
that I ultimately learned and decided [br]to believe in from your texts.
0:14:49.689,0:14:56.556
So if--if the lowercase letters of bell hooks
0:14:56.556,0:15:04.635
are in part about a recognition that [br]the ego is less important than the content,
0:15:04.635,0:15:10.461
it was in fact very painful for me when MSNBC [br]named the show "Melissa Harris-Perry".
0:15:10.461,0:15:16.853
And I fought it and we--I had 4,000 other [br]really funny names [ LAUGHTER ],
0:15:16.853,0:15:21.071
but--and they were also--all sounded [br]like some other networks' shows
0:15:21.071,0:15:26.095
but in part because I thought, no [br]what we're supposed to be doing is not saying,
0:15:26.095,0:15:33.783
"Watch me! Me! It's all about me!" but instead spend [br]time in the content. So I don't--I guess part of what I-
0:15:33.783,0:15:38.121
[ b.h. ] --By the way, that failed. I mean, [br]people became as obsessed with bell hooks--
0:15:38.121,0:15:39.225
[ MHP ] Yeah.
0:15:39.225,0:15:42.414
[ b.h. ] --and the lowercase did not [br][ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] do--
0:15:42.414,0:15:45.116
[ MHP ] --right, yes! This is what--
0:15:45.116,0:15:50.505
[ b.h. ] --you know, it didn't do the work [br]that I felt as a spiritual
0:15:50.505,0:15:57.135
because for me it was not just a political--it was [br]a spiritual decision at the time, you know?
0:15:57.135,0:16:01.145
About who am I and where do I place myself?
0:16:01.145,0:16:08.278
And I didn't want to place myself, my personality, [br]my ego, but other people placed it.
0:16:08.278,0:16:13.830
So they just reified and fetishized [br]the small bell hooks.
0:16:13.830,0:16:21.033
So I realized, you know, how much power we don't[br]have over how our representations are perceived.
0:16:21.033,0:16:27.620
And that kind of goes back to my saying that [br]when people think we're angry, or strident, or difficult,
0:16:27.620,0:16:30.289
when we may not have [br]that perception of ourselves at all.
0:16:30.289,0:16:34.526
When I first y'know published, Aint I A Woman, [br]the white women at South End Press said,
0:16:34.526,0:16:36.732
you know, it was such an angry book.
0:16:36.732,0:16:38.785
And I didn't know what they were talking about.
0:16:38.785,0:16:41.283
Because again, I felt it was a clear book.
0:16:41.283,0:16:45.566
It was a book saying things [br]that hadn't been said before, but anger?
0:16:45.566,0:16:47.134
You know, I'm one of these Black women
0:16:47.134,0:16:54.036
if I'm angry, you will know that I'm angry [br]and I'm gonna--I'm gonna own my anger.
0:16:54.036,0:17:00.665
And so I knew that that wasn't the case, and that [br]has been something that I feel is a constant battle.
0:17:00.665,0:17:03.298
I've been referring a lot to [br]"Sweet Honey in the Rock":
0:17:03.298,0:17:05.529
"when we work for freedom, we cannot rest",
0:17:05.529,0:17:10.362
because people are constantly using [br]"anger" and "difficult".
0:17:10.362,0:17:14.525
I mean I have to admit I get "difficult" now [br]more than "anger".
0:17:14.525,0:17:16.329
You know, "bell is difficult."
0:17:16.329,0:17:17.640
[ MHP ] Yeah.
0:17:17.640,0:17:20.435
[ b.h. ] You know, when people drop you, [br]or when--from publishing, or something,
0:17:20.435,0:17:26.102
and they say "well, bell is difficult." [br]And it's because you raise certain kinds of images.
0:17:26.102,0:17:35.546
And once again, I think it's about, Melissa, [br]that interface between our radical political integrity
0:17:35.546,0:17:42.287
and the fact that we are in imperialist, [br]white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. So--
0:17:42.287,0:17:47.963
[ MHP ] And you might be, I mean, [br]so I was angry at Ms. Mehta,
0:17:47.963,0:17:52.104
her inability to see that it was patently-
0:17:52.104,0:17:54.422
[ b.h. ] Uh-oh, mess up all my theories. [br][ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:17:54.422,0:17:57.176
[ MHP ] --Right--no, no, but [ AUDIENCE [br]LAUGHING ] but not just her.
0:17:57.176,0:18:01.507
I was angry with the idea that we continue [br]to propagate this notion,
0:18:01.507,0:18:05.176
that to be poor is somehow relaxing.
0:18:05.176,0:18:09.762
That people are chillin on public service, [br]like I mean, [ AUDIENCE APPLAUDING ]
0:18:09.762,0:18:15.482
and that, you know, that--that riskiness [br]is associated with wealth, right?
0:18:15.482,0:18:19.905
So I--the only thing I push back against [br]is the notion that I'm irrational.
0:18:19.905,0:18:23.236
I mean, I'm mad, [br]but I'm mad about something, I'm not...
0:18:23.236,0:18:30.227
I'm not mad as an inherent aspect of my Blackness, [br]or my womanhood, right? But mad about something.
0:18:30.227,0:18:34.297
And you know, I get difficult, but I am difficult.
0:18:34.297,0:18:40.536
Like, but, but so do--I mean, like, [ WHISPERING ] [br]so are all the white guys. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:18:40.536,0:18:46.208
Right? And I mean, I'm legitimately not trying [br]to be funny, in the sense that I know...
0:18:46.208,0:18:50.288
so I know that I come to work [br]after my producers come to work,
0:18:50.288,0:18:57.954
and I'm a little bit, y'know, demanding [br]and a lot of times, so I--"difficult".
0:18:57.954,0:19:04.597
But all the white boys were difficult too in [br]everything from the academy to general life to
0:19:04.597,0:19:07.993
you know, right?
0:19:07.993,0:19:14.241
And but it's as though that difficulty is presumed [br]to be legitimate whereas ours is illegitimate.
0:19:14.241,0:19:15.758
[ b.h. ] Of course, you know, it's funny.
0:19:15.758,0:19:19.213
I don't think that I'm difficult. [br]I think that I'm exacting.
0:19:19.213,0:19:20.595
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:19:20.595,0:19:22.459
And precise.
0:19:22.459,0:19:27.653
And I mean, I think that words we use are very [br]important because I think that for me
0:19:27.653,0:19:29.983
I mean, let's face it, folks.
0:19:29.983,0:19:32.903
You don't be a Black woman from a working-class [br]background in America
0:19:32.903,0:19:37.156
and write more than thirty books [br]'cause you sitting around being difficult. You know?
0:19:37.156,0:19:39.086
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING, SOME APPLAUSE ]
0:19:39.086,0:19:44.829
That work comes out of [br]the amazing discipline of my life,
0:19:44.829,0:19:48.368
which I don't necessarily attribute to my ego or me,
0:19:48.368,0:19:53.011
but to the recognition of what it takes [br]to get a particular job done,
0:19:53.011,0:19:57.475
and that will, as many of you have experienced [br]in this room,
0:19:57.475,0:20:04.630
to write, to put other things aside to write, [br]to sit at my computer
0:20:04.630,0:20:10.025
and key in the "Beasts of The Southern Wild" piece
0:20:10.025,0:20:11.925
while I am sitting there crying
0:20:11.925,0:20:16.725
because I just can't take in another image [br]of an abused Black child
0:20:16.725,0:20:20.653
being represented as entertaining.
0:20:20.653,0:20:25.115
And I am sitting there, and I am writing, but I'm [br]also hurting. [ VOICE STRAINED WITH EMOTION ]
0:20:25.115,0:20:32.254
I'm hurting because we can't get past the construct-[br]ion of Black children as little mini-adults
0:20:32.254,0:20:36.929
whose innocence we don't have to protect.
0:20:36.929,0:20:43.051
You know, who we can consider "cute" if they're [br]being slapped around by an alcoholic father.
0:20:43.051,0:20:45.807
You know, not to mention all the other things [br]we could name.
0:20:45.807,0:20:52.103
[ MHP ] Well, and then the abuse not only of [br]the character, but actually of Quvenzhané Wallis,
0:20:52.103,0:20:56.788
by Black and white communities, [br]in the immediate aftermath of that film,
0:20:56.788,0:21:00.729
which I really, really disliked that film.
0:21:00.729,0:21:04.739
And watched it in New Orleans, sat in a theater [br]in New Orleans and watched it,
0:21:04.739,0:21:07.801
and came home and read your piece.
0:21:07.801,0:21:11.504
And in fact, like the moment of Bennett students [br]saying "Have you read bell hooks?",
0:21:11.504,0:21:14.964
coming back and reading your piece and saying, [br]"Oh bell, bell's back."
0:21:14.964,0:21:22.427
And in part, that the pain, the anger, but also that
0:21:22.427,0:21:24.858
this was one of those movies [br]that we were supposed to like,
0:21:24.858,0:21:29.149
and we were supposed to say good and nice things [br]about, and was supposed to be "artsy" and "funny"
0:21:29.149,0:21:31.113
and you're supposed to be "deep" and "get it",
0:21:31.113,0:21:36.532
and you're willingness to say, "Nope, the abuse [br]of a Young Black girl's body as--is not deep.
0:21:36.532,0:21:38.639
It's appalling."
0:21:38.639,0:21:46.801
[ b.h. ] And also, why can't we teach other people [br]to recognize that this is traumatic, and not "funny",
0:21:46.801,0:21:50.075
and not "cute", and that's--that's that again,
0:21:50.075,0:21:53.973
"when we work for freedom, we cannot rest" [br]because it's a constant struggle.
0:21:53.973,0:21:58.430
I mean, it's interesting because, [br]I can tell you right now.
0:21:58.430,0:22:03.626
Ms. Melissa liked "Twelve Years of Slavery", [br]and I really hated it.
0:22:03.626,0:22:10.619
I thought that, or I won't even say I hated it. [br]Nah, sentimental clap-trap. [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
0:22:10.619,0:22:13.331
But one of the things I felt about it,
0:22:13.331,0:22:19.878
and--'cause we don't want to just sit here and act [br]like we schmooze and agree on everything
0:22:19.878,0:22:25.149
I felt that it actually negated [br]the Black female voice.
0:22:25.149,0:22:33.678
That she was given voice only in so much as she [br]gave expression to Black male emotional feeling.
0:22:33.678,0:22:40.130
That the Black male does not have to take [br]responsibility for his own emotional universe,
0:22:40.130,0:22:43.395
that Patsy takes that cross.
0:22:43.395,0:22:46.011
So it's like, okay not only are you suffering,
0:22:46.011,0:22:54.769
but you have to take on you the added burden [br]of articulating this Black man's pain to him, so--
0:22:54.769,0:22:56.856
[ MHP ] So, so how much that though
0:22:56.856,0:23:02.692
and this is part of why I've approached this film [br]so differently than the other slave films
0:23:02.692,0:23:10.048
how much of that is because it is the reading of [br]his autobiography, his slave narrative,
0:23:10.048,0:23:12.077
and so that is what he does to her?
0:23:12.077,0:23:15.973
Like he does in fact create Patsy in that way, [br]in that text,
0:23:15.973,0:23:18.451
so the film reproduces the thing
0:23:18.451,0:23:24.037
that he as Black patriarch -even in the context of enslavement- does to her?
0:23:24.037,0:23:25.794
[ b.h. ] Yeah, honey, [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
0:23:25.794,0:23:32.373
but if the film-maker can create for us [br]that scene with Mrs. Shaw that is not in the book,
0:23:32.373,0:23:37.291
then why can't he--I mean, one of the things that [br]I stand on all the time
0:23:37.291,0:23:42.733
film does not exist for the purpose of [br]giving us reality.
0:23:42.733,0:23:48.051
And I always say, like, if my life is shit, I don't want [br]to go pay $10 or $12 [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:23:48.051,0:23:53.515
to see it displayed so that we have to ask ourselves.
0:23:53.515,0:23:59.289
I guess what I want for us all the time, Melissa, [br]which some of us feel happens on your show,
0:23:59.289,0:24:04.954
is a pushing of the imagination--a broadening of [br]how we think about things,
0:24:04.954,0:24:08.850
and not this sort of narrowing-down of [br]how we think about things.
0:24:08.850,0:24:14.939
And I feel like, you know, I'm tired of the [br]naked, raped, beaten Black woman body.
0:24:14.939,0:24:21.943
I want to see an image of Black femaleness [br]that alters our universe in some way.
0:24:21.943,0:24:27.357
I mean, Melissa--which was a question I was dying [br]to ask her, so I can ask her tonight
0:24:27.357,0:24:33.282
in "Sister Citizen", she really writes critically [br]about Michelle Obama, for example,
0:24:33.282,0:24:36.066
as representing that kind of shift.
0:24:36.066,0:24:40.360
That we have this transformative image
0:24:40.360,0:24:46.626
and I feel like, yes, we started out with this [br]incredible powerful Black female voice,
0:24:46.626,0:24:50.941
Michelle Obama, and it got smallerand smaller,
0:24:50.941,0:24:58.551
and I wonder if you think that. Or if you think that [br]it kept the momentum that it began with?
0:24:58.551,0:25:05.125
[ MHP ] So, for me, First Lady Obama [br]is navigating multiple spaces,
0:25:05.125,0:25:11.140
and in some ways, it has retained its bigness and [br]its value, and in other ways it has diminished.
0:25:11.140,0:25:14.197
Most importantly, for me, I think there was [br]an active, purposeful,
0:25:14.197,0:25:18.084
and I think she she has said it to us,
0:25:18.084,0:25:27.931
desire to remove from public space that idea of [br]the Black woman who emasculates her husband.
0:25:27.931,0:25:35.702
That she very actively and purposefully moved back [br]from the partnership model that we saw initially.
0:25:35.702,0:25:38.786
Not only partnership, but actually, [br]an active critique of her husband.
0:25:38.786,0:25:42.060
So when Senator Obama is running in 2007-8,
0:25:42.060,0:25:45.645
she has a variety of punch-lines, [br]one of which includes:
0:25:45.645,0:25:50.642
"Oh yeah, you know, Barack is stinky [br]in the morning, and he leaves his socks around."
0:25:50.642,0:25:55.818
She had another line that was about feeling like [br]a single-parent for much of their early marriage
0:25:55.818,0:25:58.695
because he was working down-state.
0:25:58.695,0:26:00.445
And so she was taking on all the parenting.
0:26:00.445,0:26:04.581
She was the primary bread-winner [br]and she was taking on all the parenting.
0:26:04.581,0:26:08.336
And then there was also a narrative about [br]her relationship with Mama Robinson,
0:26:08.336,0:26:12.713
and the importance that Mama Robinson had [br]in stepping in as the second parent
0:26:12.713,0:26:16.297
when state Senator Barack Obama was down-state.
0:26:16.297,0:26:19.683
And that narrative went away after the primaries.
0:26:19.683,0:26:24.133
So as soon as, basically they got through, [br]about South Carolina,
0:26:24.133,0:26:29.751
and it became clear that it was very possible that [br]Barack Obama could win the Democratic Primary,
0:26:29.751,0:26:36.109
Michelle Obama "the wife" became the [br]much more traditional political wife,
0:26:36.109,0:26:39.022
who supports in sort of a doe-eyed way, [br]her husband.
0:26:39.022,0:26:41.368
But that wasn't the totality.
0:26:41.368,0:26:43.821
So on that hand, yes, I would agree, [br]I think she shrinks.
0:26:43.821,0:26:46.733
But the other thing I offer though, [br]is this possibility
0:26:46.733,0:26:54.040
that she's performing two other things that I do find [br]to be a sustaining pushing of the imagination.
0:26:54.040,0:26:55.730
One is about her body,
0:26:55.730,0:27:03.732
and this initial desire to dissect First Lady Obama [br]in all the ways that we have dissected women,
0:27:03.732,0:27:06.458
Black women in particular, [br]since the Venus Hottentot.
0:27:06.458,0:27:10.546
And so rather than talking about Michelle Obama [br]as an embodied person,
0:27:10.546,0:27:12.197
we would talk about her arms.
0:27:12.197,0:27:16.021
"I want Michelle Obama's arms." [br]"I want Michelle Obama's behind." "I want"--right?
0:27:16.021,0:27:20.720
And so it was a rhetorical and public dissection [br]of her into parts,
0:27:20.720,0:27:23.601
so that we weren't talking about her, [br]but talking about the parts of her body.
0:27:23.601,0:27:30.150
Now for me, the immediate rational reasonable [br]response to that is to stop performing your body,
0:27:30.150,0:27:32.748
to--when people are talking about your body[br]to cover.
0:27:32.748,0:27:34.418
I mean that's what our grandmothers taught us, right?
0:27:34.418,0:27:36.728
"Girl, hold it--hold it in. Keep it tight," right?
0:27:36.728,0:27:41.343
Because people--but instead, the First Lady did [br]this sort of extraordinary thing where she was like,
0:27:41.343,0:27:43.970
"Oh, so you want to scrutinize? Here I am."
0:27:43.970,0:27:45.847
She went even more sleeveless.
0:27:45.847,0:27:47.726
She had this amazing--I encourage you to go home
0:27:47.726,0:27:51.807
and Google the--just put in "hula hoops" [br]and "First Lady Obama" -
0:27:51.807,0:27:56.480
there's this incredible series of her in the first spring [br]that they're in the White House of Spring 2009
0:27:56.480,0:28:01.739
and she is running - she's this 6-foot-tall Black [br]woman, barefoot, hula-hooping,
0:28:01.739,0:28:05.075
and running across the White House lawn, [br]and it is...
0:28:05.075,0:28:09.645
Like when I say that, right, that sounds like [br]some kind of weird racist KKK movie, right?
0:28:09.645,0:28:11.315
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:28:11.315,0:28:14.312
But instead, it's like, it is completely beautiful
0:28:14.312,0:28:19.892
and not beautiful in some like "Jackie O."[br]"oh she's like Jackie O."--no.
0:28:19.892,0:28:22.688
She's embodied in this very different way,
0:28:22.688,0:28:27.501
and the very fact that she goes into obesity politics [br]that in part invites scrutiny of her body,
0:28:27.501,0:28:32.647
and then undoubtedly of her daughter's, [br]is sort of an unwillingness to shrink.
0:28:32.647,0:28:35.118
So she shrinks in the wife role.
0:28:35.118,0:28:40.698
I feel her stand up in the, in the sort of [br]"inviting the scrutiny of the body".
0:28:40.698,0:28:44.310
And the last thing I'll say is, [br]when there was this attempt to do
0:28:44.310,0:28:47.310
--and it's the one thing I loved about [br]"Twelve Years a Slave"--
0:28:47.310,0:28:50.640
to me, "Twelve Years a Slave" was the first time
0:28:50.640,0:28:56.457
that there wasn't a cinematic redemption [br]of the white woman slaveholder.
0:28:56.457,0:29:04.858
And instead, they are made absolutely complicit [br]and evil and attached
0:29:04.874,0:29:11.514
and there's no sense that there is some gender [br]equity that will--nope. [ SOME LAUGHS ]
0:29:11.514,0:29:30.289
[ b.h. ] And you didn't see that in "Django"? [br][ PROLONGED LAUGHTER ] No I mean--
0:29:30.289,0:29:32.818
[ MHP ] I can't--I can't talk about "Django", bell.
0:29:32.818,0:29:35.665
[ b.h. ] Oh, okay, but I have to say [br]that one of my favorite scenes
0:29:35.665,0:29:40.987
is when the two very obedient Black female slaves [br]are on that stairway
0:29:40.987,0:29:49.681
and Django tells them to say "goodbye to Ms. Ann", [br]and they've been so obedient and subservient,
0:29:49.681,0:29:51.724
but it's like that open door of freedom,
0:29:51.724,0:29:55.944
that when they have the opportunity to walk through [br]that open door of freedom,
0:29:55.944,0:30:00.889
that hold to me at that moment--the mammy image- [br]is totally deconstructed.
0:30:00.889,0:30:04.891
And they're like "goodbye" and he blows her away.
0:30:04.891,0:30:08.810
I see that as also that reminder of complicity,
0:30:08.810,0:30:15.414
that white women have been complicit in this [br]imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
0:30:15.414,0:30:16.667
[ A FEW CLAPS ]
0:30:16.667,0:30:20.751
And not just these sort of passive observers [br]or victims.
0:30:20.751,0:30:22.792
[ MHP ] I feel you, I feel you. I feel you--
0:30:22.792,0:30:23.995
[ b.h. ] -But let's not be--
0:30:23.995,0:30:26.297
[ MHP ] But I can't--but "Django", but 'cause see...
0:30:26.297,0:30:27.712
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:30:27.712,0:30:31.470
'cause for me what happened in those first moments [br]in the movie theater, in "Twelve Years a Slave",
0:30:31.470,0:30:33.305
when they're taken onto the ship
0:30:33.305,0:30:35.167
and then the people who have been watching way [br]too much "Django" are like,
0:30:35.167,0:30:40.230
"I can't even believe you're just gonna--why ain't [br]you gonna fight back?!" [ FOOT STOMP ]
0:30:40.230,0:30:41.572
Because this is not a fantasy.
0:30:41.572,0:30:43.907
Because this is a slave narrative--because there is
0:30:43.907,0:30:49.551
because the scene then when he is lynched for days [br]is what happens when you fight.
0:30:49.551,0:30:52.840
Because they kill Omar with a shank [br]in like two minutes.
0:30:52.840,0:30:55.117
And he had been--because for me, [br]I guess the reason
0:30:55.117,0:31:00.214
the reason that that "Django" does not perform [br]that for me is because it's the fantasy.
0:31:00.214,0:31:03.366
[ b.h. ] But see, I think it's all fantasy. [br][ SOME "YEAH'S" FROM AUDIENCE ]
0:31:03.366,0:31:04.630
[ MHP ] Okay.
0:31:04.630,0:31:06.608
[ b.h. ] I think it's all fantasy. [br]It's all fiction. It's all-
0:31:06.608,0:31:11.279
-I mean I have to say the only slavery movie [br]that I can really say really touched me
0:31:11.279,0:31:16.404
was "Slavery by Another Name", [br]the fictive documentary.
0:31:16.404,0:31:19.340
Because it had those real Black people.
0:31:19.340,0:31:25.663
I mean I had the good fortune to see it at Sundance [br]with Eric Holder and his wife,
0:31:25.663,0:31:30.114
whose family is part of the film, [br]and part of that experience.
0:31:30.114,0:31:37.462
I, myself, okay I'ma say that [br]what I'm tired of in general is sentimentality.
0:31:37.462,0:31:38.937
I mean, James Baldwin said that
0:31:38.937,0:31:44.952
"sentimentality is the ostentatious parading of [br]excessive and spurious emotion.
0:31:44.952,0:31:49.351
It is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel."
0:31:49.351,0:31:52.991
So I'm actually[br]we can go away from particular movies.
0:31:52.991,0:31:55.697
I'm concerned about why is it that
0:31:55.697,0:32:03.791
there's a kind of collective response to the [br]plantation culture we as Black people are living in
0:32:03.791,0:32:07.751
that has primarily to do with sentimentality.
0:32:07.751,0:32:10.497
With people, whether we're talking about [br]"The Butler",
0:32:10.497,0:32:14.366
whether we're talking about [br]some of Tyler Perry's stuff [ LAUGHING ],
0:32:14.366,0:32:16.291
it's like, you know?
0:32:16.291,0:32:20.867
I mean, let's stand and weep [br]and let's weep and weep.
0:32:20.867,0:32:29.208
You know, and while we're weeping, the violence [br]against us globally, the global slavery, continues.
0:32:29.208,0:32:32.808
And I'm trying to analyze it, [br]and maybe you have some thoughts about it,
0:32:32.808,0:32:39.569
but why is there this obsession at this historical [br]moment with sentimentality and melodrama?
0:32:39.569,0:32:43.418
'Cause you know my favorite melodrama [br]is imitation of life. [ APPLAUSE ]
0:32:44.525,0:32:51.109
I'm old enough to have left [ MELODRAMATICALLY ] [br]"Maaaaama! I diiiiid love you!"
0:32:51.109,0:32:52.214
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:32:52.214,0:32:54.049
"I diiiid love you!"
0:32:54.049,0:32:59.877
But again, mama don't get to hear that [br]'cause she dead.
0:32:59.877,0:33:03.039
[ LAUGHTER ] And so, what are your thoughts [br]about that?
0:33:03.039,0:33:09.861
This sort of upsurge, I feel, [br]in sentimental portraits of Blackness.
0:33:09.861,0:33:13.866
Not--and we don't have to just talk about slavery, [br]'cause "The Butler" certainly, you know.
0:33:13.866,0:33:18.642
[ MHP ] Yes. [ A FEW LAUGHS ] Okay so, [br]so I mean, all right.
0:33:18.642,0:33:25.918
So, okay, so there's "Django" on the one hand, then [br]there's "The Butler" and God help me, "The Help".
0:33:25.918,0:33:34.530
[ AUDIENCE BOOING AND THEN BREAKING INTO LAUGHTER ] I guess--
0:33:34.530,0:33:36.605
[ b.h. ] All of which are sentimental.
0:33:36.605,0:33:38.493
[ MHP ] Yes, right, right.
0:33:38.493,0:33:41.777
And so I'm just kind of running in my head what [br]you're saying & trying to think through this a little bit.
0:33:41.777,0:33:52.673
It certainly felt to me like the "The Help" and [br]"The Butler" are popular culture
0:33:52.673,0:33:55.427
responding to the angst of the possibility,
0:33:55.427,0:34:00.364
not only of Black empowerment [br]in the personhood of President Obama,
0:34:00.364,0:34:06.028
but also, the desire for the magical negro [br]to reappear to make things better.
0:34:06.028,0:34:09.919
So that the economic downturn itself, right?
0:34:09.919,0:34:18.170
And the sense of white America experiencing, [br]for the first time in 50 years,
0:34:18.170,0:34:22.961
the unemployment rates that Black folks [br]have been living with for 60 years, right?
0:34:22.961,0:34:28.420
So that the Tea Party can actively, [br]just weeks after President Obama's inauguration,
0:34:28.420,0:34:34.477
can sort of take to the mall in anger about a [br]10% unemployment rate, and [ LAUGHING ]
0:34:34.477,0:34:38.896
we know like 10% unemployment rate for Black [br]people would be cause for like, Juneteenth.
0:34:38.896,0:34:40.539
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:34:40.539,0:34:42.118
Right? We'd be happy.
0:34:42.118,0:34:45.606
And I--so I presume that part of what happens then,
0:34:45.606,0:34:50.211
why we need "The Butler", why we need [br]"The Help", and so maybe-
0:34:50.211,0:34:54.352
and I'm gonna pause and think about maybe [br]this is also why we need to bring back slavery.
0:34:54.352,0:34:56.207
But I'm not sure--I'll think about it.
0:34:56.207,0:35:05.770
But maybe the reason we need to go engage [br]with them in our fictional emotional lives is
0:35:05.770,0:35:11.383
because those negroes gave-[br]they solved the problems of America
0:35:11.383,0:35:16.911
through their willingness to sacrifice [br]for the American project.
0:35:16.911,0:35:20.973
And so, I mean the fact that, [br]I will say at the end of "Twelve Years a Slave",
0:35:20.973,0:35:25.315
what happens--he goes to the American court [br]system, right? There is no "Django" fantasy,
0:35:25.315,0:35:27.568
like the "fantasy" is that. Right?
0:35:27.568,0:35:31.666
What the actual enslaved man does is he goes [br]and takes these men to court.
0:35:31.666,0:35:39.231
There is a presumption, even in that moment, [br]that somehow there will be justice available.
0:35:39.231,0:35:42.787
The thing that we actually did [br]in the years following emancipation
0:35:42.787,0:35:48.173
was to run for office, and buy land, and I mean it's
0:35:48.173,0:35:53.097
so maybe there's a desire to reconstruct [br]that version of Black folks
0:35:53.097,0:35:56.100
so that we could fix what is currently wrong.
0:35:56.100,0:35:59.720
Because that's always been our magical capacity.
0:35:59.720,0:36:02.204
[ b.h. ] Or so that we can simply grieve.
0:36:02.204,0:36:06.245
We can have a vehicle for the expression [br]of the depth of our grief.
0:36:06.245,0:36:08.566
Because I do believe that for some time now,
0:36:08.566,0:36:13.344
Black people collectively have been caught [br]in a profound grief.
0:36:13.344,0:36:19.724
I've been working on writing about justice & using [br]Martin Luther King's "Where Do We Go From Here?"
0:36:19.724,0:36:24.235
And I'm just amazed that Dr. King [br]was talking about fascism.
0:36:24.235,0:36:30.572
He was talking about the--he was so prescient that [br]there will be things like the Tea Party.
0:36:30.572,0:36:34.065
And the thing that he says that's so amazing is that
0:36:34.065,0:36:39.282
there will be this growth--"a native form"-[br]these are his words--"of fascism",
0:36:39.282,0:36:42.503
as Black people press forward for equality.
0:36:42.503,0:36:44.918
And then he says that awesome insight
0:36:44.918,0:36:53.972
that white people would rather destroy democracy [br]than have racial equality.
0:36:53.972,0:36:56.100
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM THE AUDIENCE ]
0:36:56.100,0:36:59.436
And I think we know that that's not true [br]of all white people,
0:36:59.436,0:37:05.789
but we really see that in those of us who live in very [br]depressed white areas, like Appalachia.
0:37:05.789,0:37:13.574
I mean, we see it so clearly that people would rather [br]have white supremacy and hierarchy
0:37:13.574,0:37:16.063
than any kind of justice.
0:37:16.063,0:37:20.301
That people really think "Justice? You know, [br]those negroes have had enough."
0:37:20.301,0:37:22.682
"We've given them enough!"
0:37:22.682,0:37:29.421
And so I think that that's what troubles me, Melissa, [br]about the sentimentality.
0:37:29.421,0:37:34.521
Because I feel it shifts us away [br]from the forms of analysis.
0:37:34.521,0:37:38.334
Like, I mean, I am myself-[br]I've been a reader of King,
0:37:38.334,0:37:41.323
but I've been away from [br]"Where Do We Go From Here?"
0:37:41.323,0:37:48.868
and so when I read it again, and I thought, boy, King [br]was talking about fascism, about what we had to do,
0:37:48.868,0:37:52.127
and so much of what he puts out we haven't done.
0:37:52.127,0:37:54.459
The critical consciousness.
0:37:54.459,0:38:00.650
It just, kind of, in a way, saddened me so deeply [br]because I think that we do live in this space-
0:38:00.650,0:38:04.271
Black people--Brown people-[br]of cognitive dissonance.
0:38:04.271,0:38:07.017
That we know white supremacy is real.
0:38:07.017,0:38:10.628
But at the same time, we would like [br]to walk through our daily lives
0:38:10.628,0:38:15.894
as though justice is real, democracy is real, [br]equality is real.
0:38:15.894,0:38:22.140
I mean, if anything that I could say about [br]"Twelve Years of Slavery", is that it depicted that.
0:38:22.140,0:38:26.792
That we see them walking through their lives, [br]thinking they've made it.
0:38:26.792,0:38:34.718
That they can live as--as assimilated Black people [br]in this bourgeois white world.
0:38:34.718,0:38:40.254
And there is something so, almost unbelievable,
0:38:40.254,0:38:46.177
about his level of innocence about the horrific nature [br]of white supremacy,
0:38:46.177,0:38:51.889
because he really believes that there is a whiteness [br]that will protect him.
0:38:51.889,0:38:55.647
Like you know? And that to me is like, wow.
0:38:55.647,0:39:02.238
If someone can come from that time period [br]and believe that whiteness will protect them.
0:39:02.238,0:39:10.410
Then I think about our son, our brother Trayvon [br]Martin, what did he think would protect him?
0:39:10.410,0:39:15.496
Did he think that he was in danger of losing his life?
0:39:15.496,0:39:20.677
Or did he have that innocence again, [br]about whiteness?
0:39:20.677,0:39:25.028
That many of us carry? [br]And many of our young people carry it, especially.
0:39:25.028,0:39:28.678
I mean, both here at The New School, [br]everywhere I go,
0:39:28.678,0:39:35.209
it is young people especially who will argue [br]that race has ended, that we're in the post-racial-
0:39:35.209,0:39:36.734
go ahead, jump in.
0:39:36.734,0:39:41.045
[ MHP ] Yeah, yeah, so I would push back [br]against that just a little bit.
0:39:41.045,0:39:47.153
That young people primarily--so I do think that [br]millennials may think about race in ways
0:39:47.153,0:39:52.115
that are different and more complicated, but they [br]ought to, I mean, 'cause the world is different.
0:39:52.115,0:39:56.164
But that Cathy Cohen's research [br]out of the Black Youth Project,
0:39:56.164,0:39:58.905
and the writings of The Black Youth Project, [br]100 and all of them,
0:39:58.905,0:40:04.411
do suggest actually that because of their very close [br]contact with the police state and with incarceration,
0:40:04.411,0:40:06.138
and with the ways in which this-
0:40:06.138,0:40:11.376
so again, the racial naiveté of the kids of the 70's-[br]all right I'ma give that to you-
0:40:11.376,0:40:13.784
because we were sort of in this moment, right?
0:40:13.784,0:40:19.642
And then, even as Reagan was happening, y'know, [br]Bill Cosby was the, y'know, #1 rated show on TV.
0:40:19.642,0:40:24.401
So there were--there were ways in which-[br]I'ma take that critique for the X generation.
0:40:24.401,0:40:34.805
But I'm not quite willing to say that of young people [br]of color in their 20's, the generation one under me,
0:40:34.805,0:40:42.258
only because the material realities of their [br]vulnerability are so present for them.
0:40:42.258,0:40:46.700
Now it may be true that that population [br]is even more stratified--
0:40:46.700,0:40:48.881
[ b.h. ] Yes, yes.
0:40:48.881,0:40:51.019
[ MHP ] --so for the wealthy children, [br]there is a different reality.
0:40:51.019,0:40:54.074
But I don't want to give it to the whole generation-[br]I don't want to say young people don't know.
0:40:54.074,0:40:57.217
And my bet is that Trayvon may not.[br]And so, in fact...
0:41:02.263,0:41:09.810
So in fact so I want to come back in a minute [br]to using King as a source.
0:41:09.810,0:41:11.948
Especially around an understanding of justice
0:41:11.948,0:41:15.641
and whether or not there's also a sentimentality [br]that occurs around--
0:41:15.641,0:41:17.184
[ b.h. ] Uh-oh.
0:41:17.184,0:41:19.751
[ MHP ] --King [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ],
0:41:19.751,0:41:24.952
and particularly when we're unwilling to interrogate[br]and push King on his homophobia and sexism.
0:41:24.952,0:41:29.800
[ APPLAUSE ] And you know, it's been-
0:41:29.800,0:41:34.786
as much as there has been this kind of sentimentality [br]around race produced by mass popular culture,
0:41:34.786,0:41:37.594
and "The Help", and "The Butler",
0:41:37.594,0:41:41.303
there's also been a sentimentality about King [br]from the critics of President Obama,
0:41:41.303,0:41:46.025
who want to say "President Obama is no King"-[br]true. [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
0:41:46.025,0:41:48.194
But then they want to say,
0:41:48.194,0:41:53.988
"President Obama is no King because he [br]makes alliances" and "because he does"-
0:41:53.988,0:41:57.911
you know, "makes compromises", and I'm like, [br]do y'all have any idea who King is?
0:41:57.911,0:42:00.825
And the kinds of compromises and alliances and
0:42:00.825,0:42:06.763
ask Fannie Lou Hamer if in fact King doesn't look [br]just like the critiques that we have of President Obama.
0:42:06.763,0:42:09.805
So it's not--let me be clear--I'm not saying [br]we shouldn't critique President Obama,
0:42:09.805,0:42:11.950
what I am suggesting is that when we do so,
0:42:11.950,0:42:16.350
by holding up a vision of King that is this version [br]that they created on the Mall
0:42:16.350,0:42:22.029
where he steps out of stone, that we can reproduce [br]that sentimentality, particularly when we don't--
0:42:22.029,0:42:24.238
[ b.h. ] But that's one King. That's one King.
0:42:24.238,0:42:25.414
[ MHP ] Yes.
0:42:25.414,0:42:29.750
[ b.h. ] I mean, I'm sorry, but most Americans [br]don't even know The King ever said anything about fascism.
0:42:29.750,0:42:31.524
They don't know that he ever said anything
0:42:31.524,0:42:35.043
about a mounting white supremacy [br]that would endanger our lives,
0:42:35.043,0:42:38.967
so I mean, I'm forgetting his name--I think it's Gary [br]Young-- [ IN BACKGROUND: "THE GUARDIAN" ]
0:42:38.967,0:42:43.800
who has done the "I Dream" speech book,
0:42:43.800,0:42:49.135
but he talks about how there's this period where [br]there is the sentimental King who's loved,
0:42:49.135,0:42:54.462
but then as King begins to talk about imperialism, [br]and to talk about other things,
0:42:54.462,0:42:57.843
that then he's talked about as a traitor, [br]he's talked about-
0:42:57.843,0:43:05.027
I mean, so I think part of what we're all being called [br]to is a more complex understanding of King.
0:43:05.027,0:43:06.514
Because I totally agree with you.
0:43:06.514,0:43:11.104
I mean I was--hate to say it but in my budding [br]militant feminism, I had no use for King.
0:43:11.104,0:43:12.687
[ SOME LAUGHTER ]
0:43:12.687,0:43:14.697
And I barely had use for Malcolm X,
0:43:14.697,0:43:19.501
because of what I felt to be their refusal to see
0:43:19.501,0:43:25.621
the way patriarchy was hurting and wounding [br]to Black males and females,
0:43:25.621,0:43:34.882
and keeping us from the love that we deserve [br]to be able to give one another. And so, you know--
0:43:34.882,0:43:37.931
[ MHP ] But I don't mean to throw King out at all. [br]In fact, actually, he was-
0:43:37.931,0:43:39.602
[ b.h. ] I didn't think you were...
0:43:39.602,0:43:45.010
[ MHP ] But I just worry about the ways--so this is [br]your same concern about sentimentality,
0:43:45.010,0:43:46.820
just to echo it back,
0:43:46.820,0:43:50.948
that even as we engage the great ideas [br]and the thinkers
0:43:50.948,0:43:54.916
and the nuggets of understanding [br]of justice and philosophy,
0:43:54.916,0:44:06.432
that because we're so absent, Black women are [br]so absent from the story, we're willing to give a pass.
0:44:06.432,0:44:10.510
[ b.h. ] I don't think that anybody would ever say [br]that about bell hooks.
0:44:10.510,0:44:12.478
[ MHP ] No, not you. Not you. [br]I'm talking about us.
0:44:12.478,0:44:14.227
[ b.h. ] Yes.
0:44:14.227,0:44:17.963
[ MHP ] I'm talking about an American vision [br]of who counts as a hero. That's what I mean.
0:44:17.963,0:44:19.501
[ b.h. ] That's right.
0:44:19.501,0:44:25.775
But I think that, you know, we are still in [br]the construction of a world
0:44:25.775,0:44:30.990
where people don't want to accept [br]that it is patriarchy that is killing Black men.
0:44:30.990,0:44:32.646
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE ]
0:44:32.646,0:44:41.117
That it is an imperialistic patriarchy that threatens [br]the life of Black men of all ages--Black males.
0:44:41.117,0:44:46.488
I mean, all this week I've been talking about [br]my little 7-year-old Black male friend, you know,
0:44:46.488,0:44:50.807
who is having tremendous problems [br]in predominantly white world,
0:44:50.807,0:44:56.548
and I try to talk to his biracial mother and say, "You [br]know, I think his problems have to do with race"
0:44:56.548,0:45:01.208
That he looks out in the world and not only does he [br]see nothing that mirrors him,
0:45:01.208,0:45:04.679
these other little white kids are telling him [br]he's a monster.
0:45:04.679,0:45:06.749
You know, he's "ugly",
0:45:06.749,0:45:10.666
and so he finally gets--she says, "Oh I think you're [br]just totally misguided." You know?
0:45:10.666,0:45:19.816
And then he finally gets into a fight at school and [br]he says, "You know, white people are just mean."
0:45:19.816,0:45:25.564
And so, there's this articulation of [br]a racialized narrative, from a 7-year-old
0:45:25.564,0:45:30.391
that knows he's already on the "outs", [br]that there's no "in" for him.
0:45:30.391,0:45:33.572
And I wonder about the trajectory of his life,
0:45:33.572,0:45:39.720
that he can feel already the depths of that angst [br]and despair, that there's no "in" for him.
0:45:39.720,0:45:43.950
And I thought about that when you [br]were talking about Trayvon Martin,
0:45:43.950,0:45:49.074
and talking about birthing a girl, a Black girl, [br]as opposed to a Black male child.
0:45:49.074,0:45:57.742
Because I do think that Melissa and I both represent [br]that very oppositional reality that I write about.
0:45:57.742,0:46:03.661
That we both have, against various odds in our life, [br]invented ourselves.
0:46:03.661,0:46:11.568
And I don't think that that radical self-invention [br]is as present for Black males in their life.
0:46:11.568,0:46:14.700
Because for us, there is no seduction of power.
0:46:14.700,0:46:20.182
There is no idea of, "oh well, if I just do [br]the right thing with my dick, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHS ]
0:46:20.182,0:46:24.045
I will be able to enter into the power of patriarchy."
0:46:24.045,0:46:31.887
And so I think that that--those things are just [br]so intimate and deep in our lives right now,
0:46:31.887,0:46:37.371
this sense of also the distance that's growing [br]between Black females and Black males,
0:46:37.371,0:46:40.241
around, I think, these very issues.
0:46:44.233,0:46:46.411
[ MHP ] So, this one's hard.
0:46:46.411,0:46:49.693
[ b.h. ] I know, we just need hours together.
0:46:49.693,0:46:54.119
[ MHP ] I know. I mean, it's so hard because [br]I simultaneously--you know,
0:46:54.119,0:47:00.463
I felt it so much on the night of the Zimmerman [br]verdict, and throughout that week,
0:47:00.463,0:47:03.787
and throughout the month that have passed.
0:47:03.787,0:47:07.765
But when I hear you say the extent to which we've-
0:47:07.765,0:47:11.309
that you and I have had a set of challenges over which we've-
0:47:11.309,0:47:14.574
but I'm sitting here thinking, okay now if I'm [br]real honest about that,
0:47:14.574,0:47:23.467
some of the most difficult, very personal barriers, [br]were placed there by Black men.
0:47:23.467,0:47:27.869
Purposefully, actively, maliciously, [br]cruelly, continuously,
0:47:27.869,0:47:33.169
whether it was my sexual assault as a teenager [br]by a Black man, who's an adult,
0:47:33.169,0:47:38.499
whether it was my [ DISTRACTION IS INAUDIBLE ]-[br]we're live streaming--there are--
0:47:38.499,0:47:42.137
[ b.h. ] She's gonna have to talk about [INAUDIBLE ]
0:47:42.137,0:47:45.470
[ MHP ] Right, no. No, I, psh. Yes.
0:47:45.470,0:47:50.800
And that, by the time that one came along, [br]there had been so many that had-
0:47:50.800,0:47:56.201
and, so for me--it's interesting for you to say this-
0:47:56.201,0:47:59.524
because I'm light-skinned,
0:47:59.524,0:48:10.698
and cis, and straight, and have a white parent, [br]and have access to all kinds of privileges from birth,
0:48:10.698,0:48:13.202
my bet is that I have been seduced by power.
0:48:13.202,0:48:16.700
Now I don't think that mine comes [br]at the end of my penis,
0:48:16.700,0:48:18.852
but my bet is that my proximity to whiteness
0:48:18.852,0:48:24.732
has in fact allowed me over and over again [br]a level of racial naiveté,
0:48:24.732,0:48:29.637
and a willingness to believe that if I could just get [br]the right white folks to give me cover,
0:48:29.637,0:48:36.458
that it will be okay. [ AUDIENCE CHEERING ]
0:48:36.458,0:48:40.716
And I think that has everything to do [br]with being embodied in this body, and not in-
0:48:40.716,0:48:43.502
so, that even as we talk about [br]"The Black Woman's Experience",
0:48:43.502,0:48:47.352
that like, the different kinds of Black women's [br]bodies in which we end up--
0:48:47.352,0:48:51.422
[ b.h. ] But then let's talk about the point at which [br]you realized that angle happened.
0:48:51.422,0:48:52.953
And then you have--
0:48:52.953,0:48:54.912
[ MHP ] Oh, and I don't know that that is true.
0:48:54.912,0:48:57.602
I mean, I show up on TV and say words
0:48:57.602,0:49:01.012
because at the moment I have the cover [br]of a powerful white man.
0:49:01.012,0:49:04.306
Like at the moment a white man is like, [br]"okay you can sit on TV and say words"
0:49:04.306,0:49:08.651
and the moment that that powerful white man [br]no longer wants me to sit on TV and say words,
0:49:08.651,0:49:11.162
I will not be allowed to sit on TV [br]and say words anymore.
0:49:11.162,0:49:13.897
[ b.h. ] But every time you speak, [br]you have a choice.
0:49:13.897,0:49:19.355
And I think that part of this huge following that's [br]here tonight for you, and that's out there in the world,
0:49:19.355,0:49:23.478
is because you have exercised that choice, [br]in a way puts you at risk,
0:49:23.478,0:49:26.816
in a way that makes it seem that yes,
0:49:26.816,0:49:30.685
that power force larger than you [br]could shut you down at any moment,
0:49:30.685,0:49:33.336
but you don't allow that to happen.
0:49:33.336,0:49:37.394
And that's the strength that I'm talking about, [br]that's a different kind of-
0:49:37.394,0:49:40.265
it's what it means to be in resistance.
0:49:40.265,0:49:43.183
I mean, all week I've been quoting [br]my beloved Paulo Freire:
0:49:43.183,0:49:48.840
"We cannot enter the struggle as objects [br]in order to later become subjects."
0:49:48.840,0:49:58.790
So you exercise the power of a redemptive [br]subjectivity, an oppositional subjectivity right there,
0:49:58.790,0:50:05.412
in the belly of the beast, knowing all the time [br]that you could be stopped at any moment,
0:50:05.412,0:50:07.059
but you don't not do it.
0:50:07.059,0:50:12.806
You don't express the views of the covering person [br]that you described.
0:50:12.806,0:50:16.764
You're challenging yourself, and we challenge you.
0:50:16.764,0:50:24.128
[ MHP ] But I still think of the riskier thing, [br]of the braver thing, as-
0:50:24.128,0:50:29.563
because you write, [br]because television killed my writing.
0:50:29.563,0:50:33.809
I haven't written since the show, [br]because you write it exists forever.
0:50:33.809,0:50:36.937
It's not ephemeral in the same way that broadcast is.
0:50:36.937,0:50:41.282
And it feels to me so much more risky to write it,
0:50:41.282,0:50:44.515
both because once you've written it, [br]I can then quote it back to you.
0:50:44.515,0:50:47.540
I can challenge you on it. [br]I can hold you accountable to it.
0:50:47.540,0:50:51.700
I can--but also because there will come a point [br]when you are gone
0:50:51.700,0:50:56.983
and the 18-year-old will still pick it up, and [br]still read it, and still discover Black Feminism,
0:50:56.983,0:51:05.369
and then you did something, bell, that is--strikes me [br]as extremely dangerous to one's ego,
0:51:05.369,0:51:12.683
which is you walked away from the brightest glare [br]of public life.
0:51:12.683,0:51:15.488
You returned to community,
0:51:15.488,0:51:24.056
and the work that you are doing now feels to me like [br]it gets rewarded in all of the ways that this system
0:51:24.056,0:51:29.931
the capitalist--the system that you named so we can [br]see the water that we're swimming in-
0:51:29.931,0:51:34.197
isn't--like, the rewards won't be those rewards.
0:51:34.197,0:51:42.126
[ b.h. ] But it gives me that ground to stand on from [br]which I can sustain my oppositional self.
0:51:42.126,0:51:47.427
I mean, all throughout this week and last night, [br]we had an amazing Sister Circle of women of color,
0:51:47.427,0:51:54.942
but a lot of those women were articulating [br]how hard it is to remain oneself.
0:51:54.942,0:51:59.311
Working in these systems, [br]working here at the New School.
0:51:59.311,0:52:04.263
And so I think partially, I mean, when I left [br]New York City, I will just never forget that day.
0:52:04.263,0:52:07.251
I'd been thinking suicidal thoughts.
0:52:07.251,0:52:12.103
I was standing on the corner, with two shoes that [br]didn't match, and all this other stuff.
0:52:12.103,0:52:14.558
I knew that it was time to go.
0:52:14.558,0:52:23.764
And to return to some type of foundation that could [br]allow me to sustain myself.
0:52:23.764,0:52:26.780
You know, when you've written a book that sells, [br]and it's selling really well,
0:52:26.780,0:52:30.267
but then suddenly you're told, "well we don't want [br]to publish you anymore".
0:52:30.267,0:52:33.932
But no reasons given, no explanations,
0:52:33.932,0:52:40.488
and all of those things that as Black women testified [br]throughout this week--they make you feel crazy.
0:52:40.488,0:52:46.566
They make you feel like "okay I did the things that [br]I was supposed to do, I arrived at the destination."
0:52:46.566,0:52:50.986
And all of the sudden I come to work one day [br]and I'm locked out.
0:52:50.986,0:52:53.158
[audible compassionate reaction from audience]
0:52:53.158,0:53:01.171
And so I think that for me, it's this decision to [br]constantly think about what nurtures that radical self,
0:53:01.171,0:53:03.115
what holds me up?
0:53:03.115,0:53:06.278
You know, Shirley Chisholm holds me up. [br][ A FEW CHEERS ]
0:53:06.278,0:53:09.206
I mean, when I-[br]her "Unbought and Unbossed" taught me,
0:53:09.206,0:53:12.662
much as Melissa and other people are saying that [br]I taught them things-
0:53:12.662,0:53:19.982
she taught me that I could be whoever I wanted to be [br]without having to lie down,
0:53:19.982,0:53:25.939
without having to be vulnerable and naked [br]to the oppressor. [ SOME CLAPS ]
0:53:25.939,0:53:31.479
But what I also learned from her was that [br]the rewards would be lesser,
0:53:31.479,0:53:34.078
that one would have to give up something.
0:53:34.078,0:53:36.702
You know when I read, a year or so ago,
0:53:36.702,0:53:40.782
and bell hooks talks--is talked about in "Ms." [br]as "missing in action",
0:53:40.782,0:53:45.375
and I think, what are they talking about? [br]I'm sitting here writing. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:53:45.375,0:53:47.746
You know?
0:53:47.746,0:53:50.136
And there are things again-[br]I talked with the students-
0:53:50.136,0:53:55.309
and Melissa will respond and will begin to close--[br]open it up for questions-
0:53:55.309,0:54:00.465
that when you are committed, [br]you often have to do things you don't want to do.
0:54:00.465,0:54:06.588
I am not interested in "Lean In," okay? You know? [br][ APPLAUSE ]
0:54:06.588,0:54:16.159
But I wrote a piece about it because I was very [br]disturbed by what I felt was its overall impact.
0:54:16.159,0:54:21.243
And because I wasn't particularly interested, [br]writing the piece was torturous.
0:54:21.243,0:54:26.200
I was so unhappy. And people kept telling me, [br]"Well why don't you stop? Why don't you"
0:54:26.200,0:54:31.228
And all of you who know me know [br]that I don't use, myself, much of the Internet,
0:54:31.228,0:54:36.816
so it's always in collaboration with other feminist[br]sisters and brothers,
0:54:36.816,0:54:40.770
that things bell hooks get on the Internet.
0:54:40.770,0:54:42.929
And so I had my colleague, [br]Stephanie Troutman, saying,
0:54:42.929,0:54:49.190
"bell, you agonized over this. You did it. [br]Let me put it on the Internet for you."
0:54:49.190,0:54:56.720
But that has been my story in writing from [br]the beginning, that I have to say some things,
0:54:56.720,0:54:59.374
but I am not always somebody [br]who wants to say them.
0:54:59.374,0:55:04.796
I want somebody else to jump up and say them, [br]and take the heat. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
0:55:04.796,0:55:06.950
[ MHP ] Yeah.
0:55:08.304,0:55:14.644
[ b.h. ] And so, I mean, she said things. [br]She takes the heat.
0:55:14.644,0:55:18.780
And I just don't want you to downplay that, [br]despite our privilege.
0:55:18.780,0:55:21.572
I mean, I have an enormously privileged life, [br]and y'all know.
0:55:21.572,0:55:26.052
Y'all up in here hear me talk about my cars and [br]my houses and different things, my cheerio privilege,
0:55:26.052,0:55:35.097
leisure, solitude, but that doesn't mean that [br]it doesn't require courage, sacrifice.
0:55:35.097,0:55:42.436
It doesn't mean that there isn't a bell welter of pain, [br]because there often is.
0:55:42.436,0:55:54.829
So that we carry on precisely because of those [br]people who we stand looking out at them-
0:55:54.829,0:56:03.275
Lorraine Hansberry--so many people we could name, [br]who remind me what I'm here to do.
0:56:03.275,0:56:08.891
You know, it was Lorraine Hansberry who first [br]taught me to start thinking critically about love.
0:56:08.891,0:56:18.193
When she asked "Are Black People loving people?" [br]Or are we so damaged and so traumatized?
0:56:18.193,0:56:24.789
So that those issues of who we are and how we [br]make our voices heard continue because, you know,
0:56:24.789,0:56:33.454
it's funny how, Melissa, I feel very strongly [br]because I have lost family to death young recently.
0:56:33.454,0:56:35.166
[ VOICE BREAKING ]
0:56:35.166,0:56:43.052
I feel very strongly that I can't count on a white racist [br]world to keep the bell hooks book going.
0:56:43.052,0:56:47.358
You know, and I laugh to people when say, [br]"Oh bell, why don't you digitalize all these books?"
0:56:47.358,0:56:53.938
and I say, "Yeah, the moment they're electronic, a [br]delete button can take them out of the universe,"
0:56:53.938,0:56:55.979
[ APPLAUSE ]
0:56:55.979,0:57:01.387
and so there is this way in which I'm struggling with [br]how do we protect our legacies as Black females?
0:57:01.387,0:57:05.110
How do we protect our voices? [ APPLAUSE ]
0:57:05.110,0:57:09.476
Because y'know there's a hundred, some hundreds [br]of men, Black and white and whatever,
0:57:09.476,0:57:12.035
who we don't know anything about [br]what they ever did,
0:57:12.035,0:57:15.840
but they have their institute, [br]they have their whatever, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
0:57:15.840,0:57:21.340
and so I am asking myself [br]at this critical juncture of my life,
0:57:21.340,0:57:26.510
what am I doing to care for the legacy of my work?
0:57:26.510,0:57:33.874
I am not assuming that that work, despite all of you [br]wonderful people that are here tonight, will live,
0:57:33.874,0:57:38.700
if I don't do the necessary things to continue its life.
0:57:38.700,0:57:42.806
I'm going to close. Melissa's going to say stuff [br]and we're going to have a few questions.
0:57:44.267,0:57:48.816
[ MHP ] I think we can go to questions. I think...
0:57:48.816,0:57:51.853
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER THEN MORE APPLAUSE ]
0:57:51.853,0:57:55.531
I think there's a couple of mics in the audience.
0:57:55.531,0:57:57.548
[ b.h. ] And you know, ask your question quickly
0:57:57.548,0:58:03.256
'cause with Buddhist compassion I will tell you [br]not to give that speech. Your name? [ LAUGHTER ]
0:58:10.591,0:58:13.682
[ KALIMA DE JESUS ] So my name [br]is Kalima De Jesus,
0:58:13.682,0:58:18.013
and I have a question regarding the push-back [br]around "Twelve Years a Slave".
0:58:18.013,0:58:24.992
And I would like to have a conversation about-[br]bell hooks, you said you talked about feeling like
0:58:24.992,0:58:30.369
you've seen enough of the Black woman body [br]who's been sexually assaulted, and I'm wondering
0:58:30.369,0:58:34.095
how do we find a balance about telling that history
0:58:34.095,0:58:41.411
of the sexual assault that Black women have endured [br]years & years up until 2013, at this particular hour,
0:58:41.411,0:58:46.908
while white women have stayed complacent? [br]And imagine it beyond that?
0:58:46.908,0:58:51.669
Holding that balance in a time when [br]we are not being taught that at all.
0:58:51.669,0:58:55.882
[ b.h. ] But we are so much more than that, [br]and that's really more the question.
0:58:55.882,0:59:00.001
The question is not how we can't image that [br]or that it's not imaged.
0:59:00.001,0:59:06.413
It's all of us and who we are that's not imaged. [br]And why are we not?
0:59:06.413,0:59:13.210
Why is there no world that wants to see the life [br]someone like me leads as a Black female?
0:59:13.210,0:59:18.755
Economically self-sufficient, solitary, [br]disciplined, writing?
0:59:18.755,0:59:22.471
Why is that not interesting,
0:59:22.471,0:59:29.623
not as interesting as images of if I were [br]being beaten, raped, if the scars were on my body?
0:59:29.623,0:59:35.514
That's what concerns me more than even [br]the sentimental slavery or whatever-
0:59:35.514,0:59:40.450
is, why are we not--where's our decolonized image?
0:59:40.450,0:59:44.739
[ MHP ] So, you know, it's interesting because [br]part of what I liked about it
0:59:44.739,0:59:48.940
was that we got to see Patsy making the dolls, [br]and we got to see her even in the context of--
0:59:48.940,0:59:51.197
[ b.h. ] I even hated the little dolls.
0:59:51.197,0:59:55.647
[ MHP ] Well, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] [br]so for me what the dolls meant,
0:59:55.647,1:00:02.152
and even her ability in the context of the horror [br]was those late-night performative dances,
1:00:02.152,1:00:07.377
that in both of those contexts, she nonetheless finds-[br]she's still human in them, right?
1:00:07.377,1:00:10.847
And that her humanity isn't entirely oppositional.
1:00:10.847,1:00:14.594
So we see her humanity [br]in her oppositional moment about the soap,
1:00:14.594,1:00:19.720
but there's also that she can just be playful, or that-
1:00:19.720,1:00:25.607
that social death is in fact a falsehood [br]in understanding what slavery was,
1:00:25.607,1:00:27.733
that there was still humanity in it.
1:00:27.733,1:00:30.138
I mean, so we have a reading of the film differently.
1:00:30.138,1:00:36.313
That said, this notion of the [br]abused Black woman's body as becoming-
1:00:36.313,1:00:43.002
so I started fairly early on in the show talking [br]about being a sexual assault survivor.
1:00:43.002,1:00:46.907
And, you know, I've been doing campus work [br]around sexual assault forever.
1:00:46.907,1:00:48.281
I mean, it's not like it's a new thing.
1:00:48.281,1:00:51.966
No one in my family, you know, [br]it wasn't a new discovery.
1:00:51.966,1:00:58.483
But I'm not sure that the people at the organization [br]where I work knew it one way or another,
1:00:58.483,1:01:00.704
but they sort of like it.
1:01:00.704,1:01:07.325
Not that they like that I was abused, but they like me [br]when I'm the sentimental person.
1:01:07.325,1:01:12.407
So they like when I write the letter to Trayvon [br]Martin's mother, to Sybrina Fulton,
1:01:12.407,1:01:20.657
which is legitimately how I felt, Black mother [br]to Black mother, but is, as bell was saying earlier,
1:01:20.657,1:01:25.408
but what it takes both to write it, [br]and to deliver it on air,
1:01:25.408,1:01:30.186
and then to live with the consequences of having it [br]delivered on air, is a lot.
1:01:30.186,1:01:33.015
It's very costly. It's very expensive.
1:01:33.015,1:01:37.659
So, it is both something that is meaningful to do, [br]and very expensive.
1:01:37.659,1:01:41.150
And so because it's very expensive, [br]I don't want to do it a lot, right?
1:01:41.150,1:01:43.155
I want to do it, but I don't want to do it every week.
1:01:43.155,1:01:45.349
It's just because shit hurts.
1:01:45.349,1:01:48.741
And then like, I remember when I did one of [br]the letters around sexual assault
1:01:48.741,1:01:53.540
and then we had done it at like 10:30, [br]so I had an hour-and-a-half of show left.
1:01:53.540,1:01:55.868
So you know I sat down and I said to myself,
1:01:55.868,1:01:58.674
okay sexual assault survivor, now it's time [br]for dissociation.
1:01:58.674,1:02:02.236
Now we're going to practice [br]our dissociation practice... here we go!
1:02:02.354,1:02:06.041
All right, half-and-a-half of now talking about Syria [br]and something else.
1:02:06.041,1:02:08.135
So it's costly, so I don't like to do it a lot.
1:02:08.135,1:02:09.952
[ b.h. ] Yes. And you shouldn't do it a lot.
1:02:09.952,1:02:15.869
[ MHP ] Right, but that's what--but, back to the [br]market--that's the market.
1:02:15.869,1:02:24.479
People like that Melissa. When Melissa is angry, [br]yelling at the economist, right?
1:02:24.479,1:02:27.356
[ b.h. ] I'll say "clear", and "exact".
1:02:27.356,1:02:31.957
[ MHP ] Exacting. When Melissa is goofy, [br]as I pretty often am,
1:02:31.957,1:02:34.637
and sometimes kind of goofy over-the-line,
1:02:34.637,1:02:43.829
sometimes goofy over-the-line wearing [br]feminine products in my ears. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
1:02:43.829,1:02:51.499
The desire not to see me--I mean people say to me, [br]"That's not you. You're not that. Don't do that."
1:02:51.499,1:02:55.219
Well of course I'm that. Of course I'm silly [br]and goofy and crazy and over-the-top,
1:02:55.219,1:02:58.871
and sometimes I'm kind of, you know, [br]sexy and bad and fly and all that.
1:02:58.871,1:03:03.711
And sometimes I am mad, and sometimes [br]I am very sad, and hurt, and in pain.
1:03:03.711,1:03:08.722
Like, because, well, shit. I'm human. [br][ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
1:03:08.722,1:03:12.640
But I do think--and on this one, bell-[br]this notion of range-
1:03:12.640,1:03:16.007
like not only in our consumption in popular culture,
1:03:16.007,1:03:20.335
but our desire to consume [br]"The Strong Black Woman"
1:03:20.335,1:03:23.819
who overcomes the worst circumstances,
1:03:23.819,1:03:26.334
is the thing that we like the best.
1:03:26.334,1:03:31.970
And I say "we" like both the broad American public, [br]Black people, "we like strong black women".
1:03:31.970,1:03:35.878
But we pitiful Black women, funny Black-[br]we already know we don't like funny Black Women-
1:03:35.878,1:03:40.202
but you can't get a job, right? [br][ LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE ]
1:03:40.202,1:03:44.009
We are live streaming--I keep forgetting [br]we are on the air. [ LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE ]
1:03:44.009,1:03:48.420
Right? [ OVERLAPPING WORDS, APPLAUSE ] [br]No job and I get really get bad--
1:03:48.420,1:03:52.150
[ b.h. ] So what we're really talking about [br]is that whole-
1:03:52.150,1:03:58.120
the whole question of what does it mean [br]to have optimal emotional well-being?
1:03:58.120,1:04:02.781
'Cause when you have optimal emotional well-being, [br]you can be whole.
1:04:02.781,1:04:07.531
You can be the diversities of who yourself is, [br]and so you're saying...
1:04:07.531,1:04:17.173
you know, we have to resist again and again, people [br]trying to deny us that space of emotional well-being,
1:04:17.173,1:04:22.831
by keeping us trapped into the plantation culture [br]that says "this is who we are".
1:04:22.831,1:04:25.717
Your name, your quick question?
1:04:25.717,1:04:31.622
Ariel Rojas: Oh! [ LAUGHTER ] [br]You caught me by surprise.
1:04:31.622,1:04:37.053
No, I was thinking about your, the finishing optimal...
1:04:37.053,1:04:38.516
[ b.h. ] Well-being.
1:04:38.516,1:04:41.892
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Well-being. All right, [br]so my name is Ariel
1:04:41.892,1:04:46.385
and I'm the president and founder of a non-profit [br]organization called Transdiaspora Network.
1:04:46.385,1:04:49.867
And I work with inner-city kids.
1:04:49.867,1:04:59.834
I always participate in these forums in a very candid[br]way because I do believe that dialogue
1:04:59.834,1:05:05.706
and communication is a good way to create ourness.
1:05:05.706,1:05:09.636
Yeah, yeah I'm getting there. [ LAUGHTER ]
1:05:09.636,1:05:14.176
But I'm putting this in context, because for me,
1:05:14.176,1:05:17.435
as the leader of a non-profit organization [br]working with inner-city kids,
1:05:17.435,1:05:28.881
it's kind of--to see the disconnection between the [br]high cultural elite of Black people producing culture,
1:05:28.881,1:05:37.143
with what's going on in the inner-city Black [br]sort-of-plantation neighborhoods.
1:05:37.143,1:05:41.305
That sometimes you see girls that [br]even when they turn 17
1:05:41.305,1:05:48.861
they haven't even been on the Brooklyn Promenade [br]to see that view of Manhattan, that is very popular--
1:05:48.861,1:05:50.809
[ MHP ] You gotta ask a question though.
1:05:50.809,1:05:52.806
[ ROJAS ] No, no, I'm going to ask a question.
1:05:52.806,1:05:54.401
[ MHP ] Okay, okay, yeah.
1:05:54.401,1:05:59.535
[ ROJAS ] Okay so how we--how we the Black [br]Leaders, can create a contrast,
1:05:59.535,1:06:05.400
not to white men, but how we can create [br]a colorful palette,
1:06:05.400,1:06:11.738
in order to educate the young generations with [br]these powerful contents that you create,
1:06:11.738,1:06:15.262
in order to fight injustice.
1:06:15.262,1:06:21.414
[ MHP ] I just--I gotta disagree with you [br]that culture is made by the Black elite.
1:06:21.414,1:06:27.104
You know, I live in New Orleans. [br]The culture is made actually by the inner-city kids.
1:06:27.104,1:06:34.773
The most powerful diasporic cultural tradition [br]currently operating in the world
1:06:34.773,1:06:39.865
was made by Black and Puerto Rican kids [br]in the inner cities of this city.
1:06:39.865,1:06:43.292
Now what I will say is, living in New Orleans,
1:06:43.292,1:06:46.844
in a place where poor people are the people [br]who create the culture that is then--
1:06:46.844,1:06:48.443
[ b.h. ] --marketed.
1:06:48.443,1:06:50.358
[ MHP ] --that is then sold.
1:06:50.358,1:06:56.838
It's like so then now the consensus on both the Right [br]and the Left is that--what's happening, for example,
1:06:56.838,1:07:00.373
the New Orleans school systems is good. [br]This is improvement in the schools.
1:07:00.373,1:07:02.432
And of course one of the most important things
1:07:02.432,1:07:05.117
is that we ripped out all music education [br]from the schools.
1:07:05.117,1:07:07.390
So I actually don't think we need to go [br]teach kids culture.
1:07:07.390,1:07:10.549
I think we just need to give young people--[br]wealthy and poor--
1:07:10.549,1:07:12.952
the tools, and they will create the culture.
1:07:12.952,1:07:14.940
[ ROJAS ] That's what I'm talking about. [br]Creating the tools.
1:07:14.940,1:07:19.219
[ MHP ] I mean, well yeah. Resources. Resources. [br]I mean, for me it's resources. Like I don't--
1:07:19.219,1:07:20.699
[ b.h. ] I just--
1:07:20.699,1:07:22.435
[ MHP ] --I don't think we need to go tell them [br]what to do--
1:07:22.435,1:07:24.200
[ ROJAS ] No, no, I'm talking more about tools [br]and ways--
1:07:24.200,1:07:26.225
[ b.h. ] --I--I want to add--add to this--
1:07:26.225,1:07:28.450
[ ROJAS ] to defend themselves because [br]what happens when they ...
1:07:28.450,1:07:29.876
[ OVERLAPPING / INAUDIBLE... [br]AUDIENCE BECOMES UNSETTLED ]
1:07:29.876,1:07:31.641
[ OTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Brother, [br]we don't talk while she was talking.
1:07:31.641,1:07:35.300
We should answer up someone else's questions. [br][ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER AND ANNOYANCE ]
1:07:35.300,1:07:41.363
[ b.h. ] I want to say that plantation culture [br]is not just the culture that the poor lived within.
1:07:41.363,1:07:45.244
We are all living within plantation culture.
1:07:45.244,1:07:49.861
Our roles, our resources, [br]are maybe radically different,
1:07:49.861,1:07:56.617
but it's part of some false notion of privilege [br]to believe that we are somehow not touched
1:07:56.617,1:08:03.294
by the plantation culture that the very very people [br]on the bottom are living.
1:08:03.294,1:08:12.943
Harsher lives, riskier lives, but the plantation culture [br]is what the U.S. is making in the world,
1:08:12.943,1:08:17.876
and it is what is sustaining here. [br]Your question, my sweet, your name?
1:08:17.876,1:08:22.810
[ TANYA FIELDS ] My name's Tanya Fields. [br]I was actually on Melissa's show last month.
1:08:22.810,1:08:24.612
[ b.h. ] Yes, I saw you.
1:08:24.612,1:08:26.856
[ FIELDS ] I'm a low-income mom living in New York,
1:08:26.856,1:08:29.235
and my daughter's first board book was [br]"Happy to be Nappy".
1:08:29.235,1:08:30.818
[ b.h. ] All right. [laughing]
1:08:30.818,1:08:33.589
[ FIELDS ] And the words that you guys are [br]saying right now are so sustaining.
1:08:33.589,1:08:37.726
As a low-income Black mother, [br]I have been struggling to find my voice,
1:08:37.726,1:08:40.235
and so I've been using my platforms: [br]Twitter, Facebook,
1:08:40.235,1:08:43.159
and talking about this being a whole person,
1:08:43.159,1:08:47.061
what it means to be unmarried with three baby [br]daddies and four kids. [ AUDIENCE AGREEMENT ]
1:08:47.061,1:08:52.720
The pushback that I am often feeling [br]is not from the white folks in the community,
1:08:52.720,1:08:56.653
it is from the other sisters who tear me down, [br][ AUDIENCE: "MMHM", APPLAUSE ]
1:08:56.653,1:09:00.862
tell me that the reason I am low-income is because [br]I didn't have the insight to choose good men,
1:09:00.862,1:09:06.443
that I should have kept my hand out and my mouth [br]closed, and my legs closed, and kept my hand out.
1:09:06.443,1:09:09.677
And so I'm trying to figure out as we talk about [br]this plantation culture,
1:09:09.677,1:09:11.781
as I try to rise above my circumstances
1:09:11.781,1:09:15.810
and literally create meals that the babies [br]in my community can eat,
1:09:15.810,1:09:19.666
how do we--it stops you from wanting [br]to have that voice.
1:09:19.666,1:09:21.500
I have people who tell me,
1:09:21.500,1:09:24.546
"When you talk about being low-income, don't talk [br]about feeding your kids on food stamps.
1:09:24.546,1:09:28.889
You don't need an audience for that. [br]Suffer in shame and in silence.
1:09:28.889,1:09:35.300
The situation that you are feeling is your own, [br]and is a product of your own bad choice."
1:09:35.300,1:09:38.887
I am pregnant with my fifth child [br]and just had this man walk out on me.
1:09:38.887,1:09:41.440
How do you wake up every morning and-
1:09:41.440,1:09:45.526
I consider myself a Black Feminist but some days [br]it's just so hard to get out of the bed
1:09:45.526,1:09:49.055
and face other Black people. [ APPLAUSE ]
1:09:57.352,1:10:01.429
[ b.h. ] Take it, mom. I said "take it." [br]I actually said, "take it, mom."
1:10:01.429,1:10:13.150
[ MHP ] So that is, that is exactly what the whole [br]thing is designed to do.
1:10:13.150,1:10:19.010
The language you used--[br]"sit alone in your shame and suffer alone".
1:10:22.344,1:10:24.830
So, um--[ VOICE BREAKING ]
1:10:29.825,1:10:34.132
[ APPLAUSE ]
1:10:34.132,1:10:46.545
[ SPEAKING INAUDIBLY AWAY FROM MIC, COMFORTING TONE] [br][ SNIFFLING, MORE APPLAUSE* ]
1:11:10.955,1:11:13.950
[ SPEAKING INTO MIC AGAIN ] [br]Um--so it's just to say that-
1:11:13.950,1:11:16.213
-so, you know, I could turn into my academic self
1:11:16.213,1:11:20.180
which says that the reason that people who are most [br]vulnerable to being in your exact same circumstance
1:11:20.180,1:11:24.370
are the ones who most want to shame you, [br]is because--it's the same reason that-
1:11:24.370,1:11:26.367
it's the sorority girls on campus who say
1:11:26.367,1:11:30.835
that you gotta keep yourself from getting raped [br]by not drinking.
1:11:30.835,1:11:37.400
It's because--it's the same reason that the churches [br]that are growing among Black folks
1:11:37.400,1:11:43.357
are the prosperity health-and-wealth ones, instead of [br]liberation and theology churches, right?
1:11:43.357,1:11:47.868
And it is because it is much easier to believe [br]that we can solve inequality
1:11:47.868,1:11:50.999
by pulling up our pants, or keeping our legs closed.
1:11:50.999,1:11:58.606
Right, so it allows you to wipe away all of the [br]structural realities that require collective action,
1:11:58.606,1:12:03.495
and that require work that goes over [br]and past your own life.
1:12:03.495,1:12:07.048
So if it's just your individual decision-making-[br]that I'm safe from it.
1:12:07.048,1:12:08.930
So as long as I make a different decision,
1:12:08.930,1:12:13.513
I will never be vulnerable to poverty, [br]or to heart-ache, or to pain. [ APPLAUSE ]
1:12:13.513,1:12:17.174
And I will just say, you know, that your point about [br]making all the right choices--right?
1:12:17.174,1:12:20.482
So I can remember the point at which [br]I became a single parent,
1:12:20.482,1:12:22.946
and I was like, okay but whoa wait a minute.
1:12:22.946,1:12:28.785
I did everything right, and I got my degree first, [br]and then I got married, and-
1:12:28.785,1:12:33.892
no, actually, I got my degree first, then I got married, [br]then I bought a house, then I got pregnant.
1:12:33.892,1:12:38.543
I'm supposed to be all good, and that motherfucker [br]be like "Peace out".
1:12:38.543,1:12:41.459
And went, and just was-[br]and there I stood, with a baby.
1:12:41.459,1:12:43.910
Now I stood there with a baby and a degree [br]and as a home-owner.
1:12:43.910,1:12:49.931
So the shame? I didn't have to--so because it's not [br]really about being a single-parent.
1:12:49.931,1:12:54.768
It's about being poor. The thing you're supposed [br]to be ashamed of is being poor.
1:12:54.768,1:13:01.363
And so it's as though--I will just say that that [br]shaming--it is a defense mechanism
1:13:01.363,1:13:04.506
to keep people from having to do [br]the hard work of organizing,
1:13:04.506,1:13:08.497
and it is the most dangerous thing [br]in marginalized communities.
1:13:08.497,1:13:12.384
It is the most dangerous thing, [br]because then we do not organize,
1:13:12.384,1:13:15.224
because we can just say that [br]"if only you had made different choices",
1:13:15.224,1:13:18.325
then everything would be fine". [ APPLAUSE ]
1:13:26.943,1:13:29.320
[ b.h. ] I think we have to remember constantly
1:13:29.320,1:13:36.897
that shaming is one of the deepest tools of [br]imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy,
1:13:36.897,1:13:39.799
because shame produces trauma.
1:13:39.799,1:13:43.144
And trauma often produces paralysis. [br][ AUDIENCE: "YEAH"s ]
1:13:43.144,1:13:46.809
So when that sister said that there are days [br]when she can't get out of bed,
1:13:46.809,1:13:51.810
lots of us experience that sense of paralysis.
1:13:51.810,1:13:59.753
So that that healing--I have to go back to--I'm not [br]going to belabor it--but to emotional well-being,
1:13:59.753,1:14:05.695
because we've got to have some mechanisms [br]to resist what is out there,
1:14:05.695,1:14:07.983
to resist the constant shaming.
1:14:07.983,1:14:09.414
Your name?
1:14:09.414,1:14:11.993
[ CHARMIN ] Hi I'm Charmin. I go to CUNY
1:14:11.993,1:14:15.164
and I just want to say that this was one of the most [br]beautiful audiences I've ever seen.
1:14:15.164,1:14:16.753
[ b.h. ] Hello, yay!
1:14:16.753,1:14:20.330
[ CHARMIN ] And I'd like to extend my invitation [br]to more public universities and institutions,
1:14:20.330,1:14:23.802
where people that look like us [br]are wanting your presence,
1:14:23.802,1:14:28.096
especially because you guys don't come here too [br]often, so just want to put that out there.
1:14:28.096,1:14:32.832
And I also wanted to say that as a political organizer [br]that is looking to demilitarize CUNY,
1:14:32.832,1:14:36.622
kicking Petraeus out of CUNY, [ CROWD CHEERS ] [br]kicking militarism out of CUNY,
1:14:36.622,1:14:42.441
how do we deal with those hyper-masculine [br]personalities that have values of anti-imperialism
1:14:42.441,1:14:48.499
and anti-racism but end up making me feel [br]uncomfortable in spaces of radical organizing,
1:14:48.499,1:14:52.102
where we're talking about [br]these really, really important issues
1:14:52.102,1:14:56.186
but understanding that imperialism is in your blood, [br]brotha, and that's exactly what you're showing me
1:14:56.186,1:14:58.413
when you're shutting me up to cut the mic, right?
1:14:58.413,1:15:04.021
So I just want a healthy way to deal with that sis, [br]'cos I cant do anti-military organizing right now,
1:15:04.021,1:15:08.938
just 'cos of the hyper-masculinity and the way that [br]it's going but I am invested, you know.
1:15:08.938,1:15:10.539
[ b.h. ] Okay--okay. [ LAUGHTER ]
1:15:10.539,1:15:12.602
[ CHARMIN ] I'm sorry. I just got interrupted, [br]that's all.
1:15:12.602,1:15:16.352
[ b.h. ] Well, I don't--I'm not going to have a long [br]answer to that, but I also want to encourage us,
1:15:16.352,1:15:19.509
as we talked about in my undergraduate class today,
1:15:19.509,1:15:25.124
when we talk about hyper-masculinity, if what [br]we mean is patriarchy, that is what we need to say.
1:15:25.124,1:15:26.661
[ CHARMIN ] Okay.
1:15:26.661,1:15:31.900
[ b.h. ] Because we have to have a space to love, [br]to revere, and to honor that which is masculine,
1:15:31.900,1:15:34.924
but is not patriarchal.
1:15:34.924,1:15:37.973
And if we are constantly equating the two,
1:15:37.973,1:15:43.808
then we are part of the assault [br]on masculinity on Black males.
1:15:43.808,1:15:48.018
[ APPLAUSE ] Are you--do you want to speak to that?
1:15:48.018,1:15:51.821
[ MHP ] So I appreciate you dividing up [br]the masculinity and the patriarchy.
1:15:51.821,1:15:56.120
I think that's a critical one that we don't do [br]and part of what I would say is, mhmm.
1:15:56.120,1:16:04.830
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Yep. And... true.
1:16:04.830,1:16:16.940
[ MORE LAUGHTER ] And y'know, in very public ways, [br]bell hooks and I have both encountered that-
1:16:16.940,1:16:20.902
the entire history of Black women's organizing.
1:16:20.902,1:16:26.345
But then I'll always say that Black women have [br]performed that, particularly straight Black women
1:16:26.345,1:16:31.075
have performed that around queer women of color.
1:16:31.075,1:16:37.812
Privileged women of color have performed that [br]around undocumented and poor women.
1:16:37.812,1:16:43.901
And even within LGBT movements, cis women, [br]even cis gay women,
1:16:43.901,1:16:45.856
perform that around trans women.
1:16:45.856,1:16:47.603
[ A FEW CLAPS ]
1:16:47.603,1:16:52.505
And so that, I think it's part of the importance [br]of pulling out hyper-masculinity,
1:16:52.505,1:16:57.628
because you can be quite femme [br]and be performing the same--
1:16:57.628,1:16:59.214
[ b.h. ] Patriarchal bull.
1:16:59.214,1:17:01.755
[ MHP ] --patriarchal bull, taking the mic, right?
1:17:01.755,1:17:04.405
So it's just to say that that "uh-huh"?
1:17:04.405,1:17:09.646
That's why it's easier to say "pull up your pants [br]and close up your legs", because organizing is hard.
1:17:09.646,1:17:15.106
Because people--I mean, who doesn't love people [br]like in theory? But the actual people?
1:17:15.106,1:17:19.417
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
1:17:19.417,1:17:24.260
I mean, the actual people are very annoying, [br]and hard, and difficult,
1:17:24.260,1:17:31.641
and you have to give a little and get a little [br]and it's aaahhh. [ LAUGHTER ] So, welcome.
1:17:31.641,1:17:35.093
[ EBONY MURPHY-ROOT ] Hello, my name is Ebony [br]Murphy-Root,
1:17:35.093,1:17:39.752
I'm a middle-school English teacher from Hartford, [br]Connecticut, currently working here.
1:17:39.752,1:17:41.849
[ SOME CLAPPING ]
1:17:41.849,1:17:45.644
And Dr. hooks, you've talked a lot about Black [br]and white female schoolteachers.
1:17:45.644,1:17:48.910
[ AWAY FROM MIC ] You obviously cover [br]a lot of ed reform in your show, Dr. Harris-Perry.
1:17:48.910,1:17:54.535
Where are the Black female voices? The Black [br]female working, schoolteacher voices in ed reform?
1:17:54.535,1:17:58.218
Because I feel like oftentimes, working as a public-[br]school teacher in Hartford Connecticut,
1:17:58.218,1:18:02.501
working now, that we are being blamed for a culture [br]that we did not create,
1:18:02.501,1:18:06.791
for problems that come in every day at schools [br]that we didn't--we didn't create.
1:18:06.791,1:18:13.171
And yet we are being dehumanized and excluded [br]from this conversation. [ APPLAUSE ]
1:18:13.171,1:18:16.704
[ MHP ] Well, I mean, you asked where you are. [br]You are the targets, dear.
1:18:16.704,1:18:24.334
You are the reason that there is a powerful [br]anti-union, anti-teacher
1:18:24.334,1:18:29.490
"go get the TFA Ivy Leaguers [br]to teach the babies instead".
1:18:29.490,1:18:38.225
I mean, it is not a mistake that the sector that [br]is dominated by educated women of color
1:18:38.225,1:18:42.865
performing a task of reproduction
1:18:42.865,1:18:49.951
is the one where there is bipartisan consensus [br]to destroy it. [ AUDIENCE AGREEMENT ]
1:18:49.951,1:18:54.865
So that's where you are. You've got the target on [br]your back, and it is the very reality
1:18:54.865,1:18:59.196
that those are the bodies most impacted by [br]the dehumanization movement,
1:18:59.196,1:19:05.202
by the chartering movement, and by the movement [br]to bring TFAs into and actually staff-hold.
1:19:05.202,1:19:08.973
So, TFA is a lovely program at its initiation,
1:19:08.973,1:19:13.384
which is the idea that wealthy, Ivy-League, [br]privileged children,
1:19:13.384,1:19:18.312
should go and spend a little time in the world [br]before they run off to run the world, right?
1:19:18.312,1:19:20.489
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
1:19:20.489,1:19:24.766
It's actually a really--and I mean I know I'm saying [br]that sort of sarcastically--but it's a smart idea, right?
1:19:24.766,1:19:29.048
Before you go off and make policy, before you go [br]to Wall Street, before you go and run for office,
1:19:29.048,1:19:30.949
spend two years in the classroom.
1:19:30.949,1:19:35.500
Because what that does is it was a program [br]whose focus was on the young person, right?
1:19:35.500,1:19:38.219
Not the student, [br]you aren't going in to save the student.
1:19:38.219,1:19:44.966
You're going in to save yourself, right? And that's [br]good. Like, yes! Great idea. We should do that.
1:19:44.966,1:19:47.407
Because then you would go get a little humility,
1:19:47.407,1:19:50.624
and you would sit quietly and listen to a teacher [br]who would tell you things, and you would learn,
1:19:50.624,1:19:52.474
and you would observe, and you would walk away.
1:19:52.474,1:19:56.979
The problem with TFA came when it stopped being [br]about the salvation of the privileged,
1:19:56.979,1:20:01.286
who needed a little saving of their full humanity [br]in order to be better policy-makers,
1:20:01.286,1:20:08.138
and instead, became that somehow they would [br]save the children and the classrooms
1:20:08.138,1:20:13.171
from professional teachers who'd committed their [br]lives to working for very little pay,
1:20:13.171,1:20:18.880
very few resources, in schools. [ APPLAUSE ]
1:20:18.880,1:20:23.264
So, yeah, that's why you're not at the table.
1:20:23.264,1:20:29.250
Because you're the thing that we are seeking [br]to destroy in education reform.
1:20:30.625,1:20:37.688
[ b.h. ] Okay we are going to hear these questions [br]and try to answer.
1:20:37.688,1:20:41.413
We'll hear the three of them because [br]our time is coming to a close.
1:20:41.413,1:20:43.559
Your question, sweetheart, your name?
1:20:43.559,1:20:46.729
[ ZEYNAB ] My name is Zeynab, and [br]my question is, was there a moment for both of you?
1:20:46.729,1:20:48.936
Was there a moment when you realized that this is it-
1:20:48.936,1:20:51.638
I need to write, I need to say something-[br]I need to talk?
1:20:51.638,1:20:59.428
And how did you push back against the urge? [br]I mean, like, if you had the urge to silence yourself?
1:20:59.428,1:21:03.420
[ b.h. ] Okay, so we'll hold that. Your question?
1:21:03.420,1:21:08.039
We're going to hear all these four questions [br]and--yes, darling?
1:21:08.039,1:21:10.181
[ NIKISHA LEWIS ] Hi, my name is Nikisha [br]Lewis, and you talked about the gap
1:21:10.181,1:21:13.552
that currently exists between men and women [br]in the Black community.
1:21:13.552,1:21:18.227
And so, as I'm thinking about Renisha McBride today, [br]and the outrage that doesn't
1:21:18.227,1:21:20.684
I feel, doesn't yet exist over her life
1:21:20.684,1:21:24.506
the loss of her life, [br]as it existed over the loss of Trayvon Martin's life.
1:21:24.506,1:21:27.895
I'm really angry and fighting back tears [br]in my work every day.
1:21:27.895,1:21:33.378
So how do we bridge this gap, this divide, in our [br]community, so that we can value all of our lives,
1:21:33.378,1:21:38.086
Black women's and girls' lives, as much as we value [br]the men and boys that we love dearly?
1:21:38.086,1:21:39.965
[ b.h. ] Okay, and--?
1:21:39.965,1:21:42.757
[ VIRGINIA ] Hi My name is Virginia, I'm here [br]with Public Allies, and my question is,
1:21:42.757,1:21:47.160
how instrumental is the male and/or white ally [br]in the movement against patriarchy?
1:21:47.160,1:21:57.562
[ MIXED AUDIENCE REACTION [br]OF TALKING AND LAUGHING ]
1:21:57.562,1:22:01.982
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Hi, I have a question [br]about African-American imperialism,
1:22:01.982,1:22:07.512
and the mode at which we are privileged [br]in our idea of Blackness,
1:22:07.512,1:22:13.174
and we throw Blackness around [br]as if we all understand what that is,
1:22:13.174,1:22:17.598
and we travel the world--there is a world out there, [br]a global world out there that we exist in,
1:22:17.598,1:22:20.892
that identifies with Blackness as an othering.
1:22:20.892,1:22:23.892
so how do we leave room for that conversation
1:22:23.892,1:22:28.493
when we start to inflict capitalist ways of thinking [br]on other people? [ APPLAUSE ]
1:22:29.949,1:22:36.401
[ b.h. ] Well, I'm going to start with that question [br]of "Why can't we value Black female lives?"
1:22:36.401,1:22:43.555
Until we challenge patriarchy, there is going to be [br]no valuing of Black women's lives
1:22:43.555,1:22:52.311
over the small valuing of Black male lives that takes [br]place, because the very structure militates against it.
1:22:52.311,1:22:58.583
So, I mean, one of the things I've always felt so [br]strongly, and really express in "We Real Cool",
1:22:58.583,1:23:04.177
is the depths of Black male woundedness [br]by patriarchal terrorism.
1:23:04.177,1:23:08.330
And until that--those wounds get addressed [br]in some way,
1:23:08.330,1:23:14.030
I don't think we're going to get the respect, [br]the recognition, the care,
1:23:14.030,1:23:19.713
because I was thinking about how even Oscar [br]Grant's mother is portrayed at the end of the film,
1:23:19.713,1:23:21.941
as blaming herself.
1:23:21.941,1:23:30.616
She should not have, you know, not that we get a [br]full-on calling-out of the system that destroys him.
1:23:32.754,1:23:39.055
[ MHP ] So, yes, and, I think part of what happens is
1:23:39.055,1:23:44.290
so I assume when you say "we value", [br]I assume you mean "Black communities"
1:23:44.290,1:23:49.194
part of what I would suggest is that what works for us
1:23:49.194,1:23:52.457
is tropes that are connected to [br]something that we understand.
1:23:52.457,1:23:56.547
And this is something--I'm still thinking about [br]your critique of "Twelve Years a Slave".
1:23:56.547,1:24:02.694
And so, one of the tropes that we understand [br]about Black women's suffering
1:24:02.694,1:24:06.698
is the idea of a Black woman raped by the white [br]male slaveowner, right? That one we get.
1:24:06.698,1:24:10.949
So, if you go back to the case, [br]the Duke lacrosse case, right?
1:24:10.949,1:24:14.362
You had immediate community mobilization. [br]
1:24:14.362,1:24:18.037
I mean, that day, [br]that night called for action [ SWOOSH! ]
1:24:18.037,1:24:25.007
because that trope--"Black woman sexually assaulted [br]by white man, in South, on old plantation"-
1:24:25.007,1:24:28.177
like, we--that one we understood. [br]We had a thing to hang it on.
1:24:28.177,1:24:31.375
We know the story that it is, and we can tell it.
1:24:31.375,1:24:33.918
Now, so pause for me on that a moment on that,[br]and let's go to all...
1:24:33.918,1:24:38.471
various stories about Black men's victimization,
1:24:38.471,1:24:44.801
and the ways in which those stories often hang on [br]the trope that we know that is the lynching trope.
1:24:44.801,1:24:48.749
So we like to forget, because it's [br]painful to remember,
1:24:48.749,1:24:52.982
that in the week after Supreme Court Justice [br]Clarence Thomas,
1:24:52.982,1:24:58.402
during his hearing about Anita Hill said, [br]"This is a high-tech lynching",
1:24:58.402,1:25:02.384
that the public opinion polls showed that greater than [br]50% of African-Americans
1:25:02.384,1:25:06.480
supported Clarence Thomas' confirmation [br]to the bench.
1:25:06.480,1:25:11.372
Now I think that's because he used the trope of [br]lynching, and that we're like "oh yeah, right!
1:25:11.372,1:25:15.163
"Black man, white"--you know--"Joe Biden and the [br]other white guy saying mean things"
1:25:15.163,1:25:18.114
"that looks like lynching--I know that trope."
1:25:18.114,1:25:21.312
And of course, no one's ever been lynched [br]for what they've done to a Black woman.
1:25:21.312,1:25:24.890
White men don't posse up to go get a Black man [br]for what he did to a Black woman.
1:25:24.890,1:25:33.343
But that story is why there was increased radio play [br]of R. Kelly after he raped a child in our community.
1:25:33.343,1:25:37.694
It's why people don't want to believe [br]Mike Tyson did it, right?
1:25:37.694,1:25:44.247
Because we get the "vulnerable Black man [br]facing white lynch mob"
1:25:44.247,1:25:48.031
that's the story that the Trayvon Martin story [br]fits into for us.
1:25:48.031,1:25:52.084
Marissa Alexander doesn't fit our story
1:25:52.084,1:25:56.826
because she is shooting a gun at [br]an abusive Black husband coming at her.
1:25:56.826,1:26:01.453
We don't have--we may know that...[br]we may intimately know that story,
1:26:01.453,1:26:08.107
but we don't have a "story"--a trope, a thing--that is [br]the abuse of Black women's bodies by Black men.
1:26:08.107,1:26:12.318
And in the case of Renisha, [br]I don't think we yet have coped with.
1:26:12.318,1:26:16.261
Because when the Trayvon Martin moment [br]happened, and the Zimmerman verdict happened,
1:26:16.261,1:26:20.506
all of us were saying, "these are the conversations [br]that we have with our sons,
1:26:20.506,1:26:22.337
about our sons' public safety".
1:26:22.337,1:26:27.504
And I think we have missed how much our girls [br]are equally vulnerable in that space. [ APPLAUSE ]
1:26:27.504,1:26:30.829
So we don't have a good...[br]we don't have a good trope.
1:26:30.829,1:26:36.123
We don't have a thing to call why a white man [br]opening the door--right,
1:26:36.123,1:26:38.339
so allegedly what we think we know at this point,
1:26:38.339,1:26:42.507
is that he opens the door [br]and sees her as a physical threat to him.
1:26:42.507,1:26:48.258
We don't--like, what is the story? So we know "white [br]man creeping down and raping the Black woman",
1:26:48.258,1:26:51.413
but we don't know "white man [br]afraid of Black woman knocking at his door".
1:26:51.413,1:26:56.798
Like, what is that story, right? So part of it is, I think [br]just a general devaluation, but the other part of it is,
1:26:56.798,1:27:00.678
I think if it doesn't fit a story [br]that we have easily available to us?
1:27:00.678,1:27:05.075
And there aren't very many stories about [br]our victimization that are easily available,
1:27:05.075,1:27:09.343
that we can employ and use, and so we're going to [br]have to generate those.
1:27:09.343,1:27:13.493
I do think that's part of it, at least.
1:27:13.493,1:27:18.322
[ b.h. ] So there was the question about writing. [br]Was there a moment?
1:27:18.322,1:27:22.064
And for me those moments are just [br]ongoing and endless,
1:27:22.064,1:27:26.627
but they began for me as a girl in [br]Virginia Street Baptist Church,
1:27:26.627,1:27:32.011
when I was encouraged to write for our [br]church magazine and stuff like that.
1:27:32.011,1:27:34.310
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
1:27:40.048,1:27:42.367
[ MHP ] Are you--dear, are you a writer?
1:27:42.367,1:27:45.011
[ ZEYNAB, BARELY AUDIBLE, NO MIC ] [br]Yeah. [ LAUGHTER ]
1:27:46.660,1:27:49.040
[ MHP ] Do you feel that impulse to write?
1:27:49.040,1:27:51.156
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah.
1:27:51.156,1:27:53.906
[ MHP ] And you feel it even when [br]there's other stuff to be done?
1:27:53.906,1:27:56.276
[ ZEYNAB ] Nah, I don't think so. [br][ LAUGHTER ]
1:27:58.572,1:28:00.921
[ MHP ] So I wonder, 'cause you asked [br]about the silencing.
1:28:00.921,1:28:03.585
Do you self-edit when you're writing, [br]like you're pulling back?
1:28:03.585,1:28:05.779
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah.
1:28:06.673,1:28:08.752
[ MHP ] Only when you're writing for yourself,
1:28:08.752,1:28:12.054
or when you're also writing...[br]so if you're writing for yourself, it's all there.
1:28:12.054,1:28:17.526
But if you're writing for an audience, you're pulling [br]it back? Who's the audience typically, teachers?
1:28:17.526,1:28:20.051
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah. Or like--
1:28:21.579,1:28:23.448
[ b.h. ] I'm going to have to speed you on.
1:28:23.448,1:28:27.107
[ MHP ] Yes, okay I'm sorry. I just--my bet is [br]that question wasn't about us, right?
1:28:27.107,1:28:32.476
Who cares what I think about writing? My bet is that [br]question is about you and that you're working on it.
1:28:32.476,1:28:38.225
But if you ask that question, and the real question is [br]"Am I a writer?", the answer is "Yes, of course you are."
1:28:38.225,1:28:40.194
If you ask that question, of course you're a writer.
1:28:40.194,1:28:44.386
And if you are, if you're self-editing, [br]at least find some friendly audiences,
1:28:44.386,1:28:49.137
some safe audiences where you can write without...[br]it's okay to self-edit to feel fearful of your audience...
1:28:49.137,1:28:51.717
I think that's okay. [br]Particularly when you're a young writer,
1:28:51.717,1:28:55.168
but also just make sure you have some audiences, [br]someone who's reading for you,
1:28:55.168,1:28:57.893
who is a safe place for you to write.
1:28:57.893,1:29:02.550
[ b.h. ] Okay, are you answering the [br]imperialism question? [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
1:29:04.493,1:29:08.212
[ MHP ] No, you want to answer that one? [br][ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
1:29:08.212,1:29:11.506
I get in too much trouble behind this, yeah. [br][ LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
1:29:17.697,1:29:21.691
[ b.h. ] I'm going to be honest. Part of my silence [br]is I've forgotten parts of the question.
1:29:21.691,1:29:24.002
I didn't--I didn't forget the imperialist--
1:29:24.002,1:29:26.292
[ MHP ] No-no, it's the [ INAUDIBLE ] [br]of Black versions-
1:29:26.292,1:29:29.262
American versions of Blackness, right? [br]And capitalism, right?
1:29:29.262,1:29:32.431
[ b.h. ] There was the patriarchal allies, [br]which was the woman behind you.
1:29:32.431,1:29:34.289
[ MHP ] Yeah, yeah, we're coming to that one.
1:29:34.289,1:29:35.873
[ b.h. ] Yeah.
1:29:35.873,1:29:38.305
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] I think that it happens [br]within both men and women,
1:29:38.305,1:29:40.617
and it does happen to men and women.
1:29:40.617,1:29:44.076
But but the implications of privilege [br]with our ideas of Blackness,
1:29:44.076,1:29:49.159
being that Blackness has changed over time, like[br]you're talking about the President in office right now,
1:29:49.159,1:29:52.531
and him being an African-American [br]imperialist essentially,
1:29:52.531,1:29:57.414
and subconsciously that affecting all of us [br]who do that as well, when we travel.
1:29:57.414,1:30:01.119
So there's a world out there that [br]we don't identify with all the time.
1:30:01.119,1:30:05.040
[ b.h. ] Well I think you've stated it. [br]I mean that's what's real.
1:30:05.040,1:30:10.338
I mean what's scary is why people [br]don't want to face that reality
1:30:10.338,1:30:16.111
why they want to still pretend that there's [br]some solidified Blackness, and not--I mean,
1:30:16.111,1:30:19.305
that there's tremendous crisis in Blackness
1:30:19.305,1:30:25.488
because our class differences and separations [br]grow more intense daily.
1:30:25.488,1:30:32.504
And we're asked to believe that there's still some [br]kind of R&B Blackness that unites us.
1:30:32.504,1:30:38.633
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Will you take the [br]patriarchal question? And then we're going to close.
1:30:40.602,1:30:43.161
[ MHP ] Yeah. Right, well, I think--we remember [br]the patriarchy question.
1:30:43.161,1:30:45.960
So, I guess the one thing I would say is--
1:30:45.960,1:30:48.686
[ VIRGINIA ] I'll just say it again.
1:30:48.686,1:30:54.875
So how instrumental is the male and/or white ally [br]in our movement against patriarchy?
1:30:54.875,1:30:59.267
[ b.h. ] I've actually been questioning [br]this use of the word "ally" [ SOME LAUGHTER ]
1:30:59.267,1:31:03.391
because I think that if someone is standing [br]on their own beliefs,
1:31:03.391,1:31:13.401
and their own beliefs are anti-patriarchal, anti-sexist, [br]they are not required to be anybody's ally.
1:31:13.401,1:31:18.216
They are on their front line in the same way [br]that I'm on my front line.
1:31:18.216,1:31:23.964
And I can tell you, women, when you find those men [br]in patriarchy--gay, straight, trans*, whatever...
1:31:23.964,1:31:29.381
that are on the front line, we recognize them. [br]The sad truth is that there are so few of them.
1:31:29.381,1:31:32.377
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE ]
1:31:32.377,1:31:39.073
Okay. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND [br]APPLAUDING ] Are you saying something?
1:31:39.073,1:31:46.349
[ MHP ] Yeah, I mean, I guess I--so one thing [br]I would--so this is maybe my--this is my academic
1:31:46.349,1:31:48.234
this is my professorial self.
1:31:48.234,1:31:55.026
I worry anytime we expect--so sometimes one of the [br]pieces of language used, particularly in the academy-
1:31:55.026,1:31:58.641
-maybe it's also used in media--I'm not so sure-[br]is this idea of role modeling.
1:31:58.641,1:32:05.252
"We need you to be there in that body to role-model [br]to other people who have bodies similar to yours,
1:32:05.252,1:32:07.841
that these things are possible."
1:32:07.841,1:32:11.957
And I have very--I have very mixed emotions [br]about that role-modeling idea,
1:32:11.957,1:32:16.865
in part because I think that the imagination [br]of Black Americans is...
1:32:16.865,1:32:22.345
our sort of critical, moral, creative imagination is one[br]of our great accomplishments in the U.S. context.
1:32:22.345,1:32:26.230
Our ability to imagine freedom in the context [br]of intergenerational chattel bondage,
1:32:26.230,1:32:30.376
our ability to believe God loves us when there is no [br]empirical evidence that God does love us,
1:32:30.376,1:32:34.981
our willingness to engage. [ LAUGHTER ]
1:32:34.981,1:32:39.277
Right, so I actually don't know that we need to cease-
1:32:39.277,1:32:44.455
-I mean, I think part of our genius is that we don't [br]need to see it to nonetheless believe it & pursue it.
1:32:44.455,1:32:50.219
And in fact, even in as much as that is, I think a [br]unique--as Cornel West would say...
1:32:50.219,1:32:54.617
a unique gift of Black people [br]to the American Project, right?
1:32:54.617,1:32:59.558
I mean that's the language that he uses. It's one of [br]our gifts, particularly in the post-9/11 moment.
1:32:59.558,1:33:09.263
That as much as that is true, it's also been true of [br]even the nastiest low-down racist patriarchs of our nation.
1:33:09.263,1:33:11.576
So my daughter--and I promise I'm going to end-
1:33:11.576,1:33:15.031
my daughter is in 6th grade and she had to learn [br]the Declaration of Independence,
1:33:15.031,1:33:17.816
the little, you know, "We hold these truths to be self-[br]evident, that all men are created equal,
1:33:17.816,1:33:19.951
and endowed with their Creator [br]with certain inalienable rights,
1:33:19.951,1:33:22.174
that among these are Life, Liberty, [br]and the Pursuit of Happiness,
1:33:22.174,1:33:28.140
and governments are instituted among men [br]to protect these rights"--right, okay?
1:33:28.140,1:33:31.493
She was hot. Mad. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
1:33:31.493,1:33:36.402
She was like, "This is some old bull. That was [br]not true! 1776, we were slaves, we couldn't vote."
1:33:36.402,1:33:43.542
She was mad, she was walking around the house, [br]mad! [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Mad!
1:33:43.542,1:33:47.944
Now part of this 'cause she's in sixth grade, so [br]she's mad that the sun comes up, so she's just mad.
1:33:47.944,1:33:54.662
But she was mad behind this, and--but, so Thomas [br]Jefferson is vile. Like he just is vile, right?
1:33:54.662,1:33:57.532
He owns his own children at various points.
1:33:57.532,1:34:03.699
But--and this is the final ally--but he didn't write [br]a document that says,
1:34:03.699,1:34:10.158
"We think that maybe, possibly, old white men [br]with money are equal, in a few kind of ways,
1:34:10.158,1:34:11.857
and maybe they could get a gut"
1:34:11.857,1:34:15.544
that's what the Constitution says, [ LAUGHTER ]
1:34:15.544,1:34:20.338
but the Declaration of Independence [br]has a moral imagination
1:34:20.338,1:34:24.294
beyond the empirical reality of [br]the 1776 Monticello Mountain.
1:34:24.294,1:34:28.538
And so I don't know that I need [br]patriarchs and white men and...
1:34:28.538,1:34:33.358
but what I do... what is possible [br]on that kind of allied position,
1:34:33.358,1:34:38.071
is for them to imagine something bigger [br]than what is in this moment.
1:34:38.071,1:34:41.613
And so as much as I've had my little, you know, [br]critiques about--like, you know,
1:34:41.613,1:34:45.364
the people who work at MSNBC, in the leadership, [br]those old white guys,
1:34:45.364,1:34:47.272
who are rich and powerful and sit around a table,
1:34:47.272,1:34:51.954
and maybe someday... maybe today... will fire me, [br]and everyone else [ LAUGHTER ]
1:34:51.954,1:34:54.159
they nonetheless did... they could say,
1:34:54.159,1:34:57.885
"oh well, what if put a little gay girl on here [br]and what if we put a little Black girl on here."
1:34:57.885,1:35:00.732
"And maybe--oh and let the Asian girl"...and how...
1:35:00.732,1:35:06.629
and so those are things that required a little bit of...[br]it's not revolution.
1:35:07.637,1:35:11.203
[ MHP ] It's the opposite of revolution, [br]but it is a little imagination.
1:35:11.203,1:35:14.556
[ b.h. ] ...at heart, also, our movement [br]away from binaries.
1:35:14.556,1:35:17.830
So we would like to leave you with this whole notion
1:35:17.830,1:35:23.539
that if you work for freedom, [br]one of the ways that you can work for freedom,
1:35:23.539,1:35:31.225
is to change your mind and to move away from the [br]space of binaries, of simplistic either-or, both-and,
1:35:31.225,1:35:37.174
and to be able to look at the picture [br]that offers us complexity.
1:35:37.174,1:35:42.789
I want to thank Stephanie Browner, Heather [br]and Jennifer, for all their work,
1:35:42.789,1:35:50.522
and my sister, my soul sister, [ LAUGHTER ]. [br]Melissa Harris-Perry, thank you for being here.
1:35:50.522,1:35:53.520
[ MHP ] Thank you, bell. Thank you, bell.
1:35:53.520,1:35:56.609
[ PASSIONATE APPLAUSE AND CHEERING... ]