[ APPLAUSE, CHEERING... ]
[ GAIL DRAKES ] Right? Right? Yeah. Let me just say, I agree completely.
I so approve that message.
[ LAUGHTER ]
So good afternoon.
I'd like to welcome you all to this afternoon's event,
"Black Female Voices, Who is Listening?",
a public dialogue between bell hooks and Melissa Harris-Perry,
the last public event in bell hooks' week-long residency at The New School.
My name is Gail Drakes,
and I am the director of the Office of Social Justice Initiatives,
housed within the Office of the Provost, here in The New School.
The office seeks to both support and amplify
the efforts of those who are working throughout the university to more fully realize
the New Schools progressive vision as reflected in all aspects of our institution.
Having just arrived in The New School in August,
I can say that the bell hooks residency has been a highlight in my time here.
And that is not only thanks to insights shared at various events this week,
but because of the excitement it's generated within the New School community.
In the week leading up to the residency, it seemed that at any given moment,
just walking down the street, or entering an elevator,
you could very likely overhear conversations and reflections amongst students, faculty, and staff,
on bell hooks and her work.
So it is my hope that while this week-long residency is ending,
that those conversations and reflections on the significance of bell hooks' work
can continue and expand here at The New School.
Of course, I would like to thank- I would like us all to thank
those who made this event possible, and the entire residency possible.
So please join me in a round of applause for
Stephanie Browner, Dean of Eugene Lang College,
Judy Pryor-Ramirez and Catherine Smith of Lang Office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice,
Heather O'Brien, assistant to the Dean,
and everyone at both Berea and the New School who helped coordinate these events.
[ APPLAUSE ]
I do have to announce a small change in our schedule.
Unfortunately, our guests do have to leave immediately after the conversation,
and regret that they will not be able to sign books as planned,
but I am very grateful that we're going to still be able to enjoy the conversation.
So I have the honor of introducing these women,
who I know for so many of us in the room, truly need no introduction.
But then I am still very pleased to offer this reminder of the accomplishment of our guest today.
bell hooks is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation.
Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1952, she grew up in a working-class family with six siblings.
hooks received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1973,
her M.A. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin,
and her Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of California Santa Cruz,
with her dissertation on author Toni Morrison.
Her use of a pseudonym is intended to honor both her grandmother, whose name she took, & her mother.
While her name's unconventional lower-casing signifies what is most important in her works--
"the substance of books, not who I am".
hooks' writing cover a broad range of topics
including teaching, gender, class, and race-- the idea of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
She strongly believes that these topics cannot be dealt with separately,
but must be understood as interconnected and linked
in the production and perpetuation of systems of oppression and class domination.
A prevalent topic in her most recent writing is community and communion--
the ability of loving communities to overcome race, class, and gender inequalities.
hooks has written over 30 books,
including personal memoirs, poetry collections, and children's books,
as well as numerous scholarly and mainstream articles.
She has taught in several colleges and universities, lectured widely in public forums,
and appeared in several documentary films.
Mmm. [ LAUGHTER ] It's a bell hooks bio, a lot going on there! I gotta hydrate! [LAUGHTER ]
Melissa Harris-Perry is the host of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry. [ CHEERING ]
The show airs on Saturdays and Sundays, which some of you seem to know, probably,
from 10 AM to noon, Eastern time.
Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University,
where she's the founding director of
the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, & Politics In The South.
Harris-Perry is author of the well-received new book
"Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America", published by Yale 2011,
and the award-winning text
"Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought",
published by Princeton University Press in 2004.
Professor Harris-Perry is a columnist for The Nation Magazine,
where she writes a monthly column, also titled "Sister Citizen".
She lives in New Orleans with her husband, James Perry,
and is a mother of a terrific daughter, Parker.
While these bios offer considerable insight into all they've done,
they can't fully represent the effect they've had on so many.
Melissa Harris-Perry, Empress of Nerdland,
check out her #nerdland hashtag on Twitter if you don't know what I mean,
has used her show on MSNBC to expand the notion of what is political,
and to amplify the voices of those we rarely, if ever, see represented on cable news.
She brings the full force of her passion, personality, and intellect to her show,
and changed what we thought was possible on a cable news show.
And bell hooks. [ LAUGHING ]
There are many ways to determine the reach and power of someone's work as a writer and academic.
Often we think about number of reviews, the number of times one is cited by other scholars, etc.
But to understand the significance of bell hooks' work,
you must think in terms of the number of lives touched and world-views transformed.
While I navigate a society that offers such a painfully narrow representation
of who can be a public intellectual,
I take heart and remember that it has been bell hooks' books
that I've so often seen in the hands of Black Women, as they would ride the bus home from work.
And it was the insight from her books, dog-eared, re-read, and well-loved,
that helped inform the work of a generation of cultural workers, activists, and feminist scholars,
who are now impressive in their own right.
So I just want to say, both personally and on behalf of all of us assembled here,
a sincere thank you to both of these women for all the ways in which they've served to help us
re-imagine what is possible at the intersection of education, public life, and the struggle for freedom.
And thank you for giving us all the opportunity to listen in to this conversation today.
Everyone, please help me welcome bell hooks & Melissa Harris-Perry.
[ APPLAUSE & CHEERING... ]
[ bell hooks ] I'm not used to being with a celebrity. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
[ Melissa Harris-Perry ] Oh! [ LAUGHTER ] Yeah, I'm pretty sure in this crowd, you're the celebrity.
[ BOTH LAUGHING ]
So we were trying to figure out how to get started
and I wanted to start by just picking up on that last insight about the fact that
none of us come to Black Feminism except through you.
And it--I was just recently on the campus of Bennett College, in Greensboro North Carolina,
and it was a kind of a wonderful moment like this,
where I rarely get a chance--where I was standing and looking out over the chapel and...
and it was all African-American women and girls and all of the faculty, in their academic regalia,
was kind of a great moment.
But one of the freshman came up to me afterward
and put her hand on my arm and fairly breathlessly said,
[whispering] "Have you read bell hooks?"
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ] Um-- and I thought, "Uh-huh. Yep." [ LAUGHING ]
[ b.h. ] I am 20 years older than this baby up here, and one of the things that I thought about is,
my early work focused so much on the question of finding our voice.
And I was thinking about how Melissa represents a generational shift,
because she has this whole national voice, and so part of what we want to talk about is,
has there been a meaningful concrete change in how we hear, think & feel about the Black Woman's voice.
Because many of you may have seen the show, where Melissa is talking--was she an economist?
[ MHP ] Uh-huh.
[ b.h. ] And-- [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
[ MHP ] --Yes, I think that is the official title of what Ms. [Angela] Mehta is.
[ b.h. ] --and I was so impressed myself. It was it was like a love moment for me,
when Melissa just, you know, really boldly put out there, what we know to be real and true.
And then I was so stunned when I kept hearing from people, "Oh, you know, she really lost it."
And I thought, kept thinking, "oh if this was Charlie Rose,
if this was any number of white men who would just boldly speak their truths?"
She didn't raise her voice in any way.
There was for me no sense of aggression, so then
but once again she was turned into the "Angry Black Woman"
not the Insightful Brilliant Black Woman
who just threw down in such a way that it created a sense of awe.
And so that then gave me pause in thinking about on one hand, has there been a shift,
or are we still pushing against a certain characterization of the Black female voice?
[ MHP ] Am I meant to answer?
[ b.h. ] You're meant to discuss.
[ MHP ] I suppose yes. So I, you know, I'm not sure how I ended up with a television show.
And I don't mean that to be joking. I really am not quite sure how that happened.
Clearly it's about a set of very odd occurrences that were part of this moment historically
where you end up with an African-American man as president,
and you end up with the most popular commentator on this African-American president
being a queer woman who is out and butch when they don't overly make her up.
And you know, and so there's sort of a - there's sort of a shift that occurs around representation,
and that shift that occurs around representation
occurs at the same time that there's a profit motivation to get an audience, right?
So I just don't want to miss that there's no moment in cable news
where people are making any kind of decision
that isn't based on a belief that there is audience and income and something else out there.
So I assume--you know, you talk about being twenty years younger
so I come of age in exactly the right moment.
In fact, I pretty regularly say
the smartest thing you could've ever done was to have been born in the 70's.
If you were going to be born a Black girl,
to be born in the 70's meant being born right at the end of that Civil Rights struggle,
but before the backlash got really ugly,
in the one moment when there were integrated public schools in the South.
Just for that one second before white flight took all...
took all the resources out of the public schools in the South
right at that moment so that when I graduate from college, we're in an economic upswing & there are jobs.
When I finished the Ph.D., people are getting multiple academic jobs.
Not like, searching for an adjunct position, like there's just structurally a set of realities.
But I don't think any of those structural realities that let a little moment like me come through
represents an American shift in who we want to hear from.
[ b.h. ] All right. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
Whereas I feel, you know, enormously blessed.
I always get annoyed with my sister when she says she's blessed and highly-favored,
but you know, I do want to say that I think of myself as just of--you know,
Melissa has a mainstream image voice that I came up really out of nowhere.
You know, little bell hooks writing "Ain't I a Woman: Black Women in Feminism"
and that sometimes I do feel like, wow.
You know, there is this audience that reads bell hooks,
and tells me how my work has affected their life.
And I think as a Black Woman writer, that is so amazing.
I mean when I think about Audre Lorde,
when I think about Pat Parker,
when I think about Zora Neale Hurston,
I think about all the Black women writers.
I mean, my students already don't know who Audre Lorde is.
They never knew who Pat was.
You know, and I think that to be a Black woman writer of non-fiction, and to be read,
is to be blessed and highly-favored.
And so I think that just as there is space now for your voice because it's a product.
It sells, it creates people like us running to hear her and watch her.
There's also that other climate of people searching
for truly dissonant ways of thinking and being and trying to carve out different ways to live our lives.
And I think that's especially a tension for Black women,
because we haven't, as a group, really carved out different ways to live our lives.
[ MHP ] I wanted to ask you about that a little bit
because there are things about the bizarro life that I find myself living now,
that I sometimes feel as though I'm judging against a set of Black Feminist Standards,
that I ultimately learned and decided to believe in from your texts.
So if--if the lowercase letters of bell hooks
are in part about a recognition that the ego is less important than the content,
it was in fact very painful for me when MSNBC named the show "Melissa Harris-Perry".
And I fought it and we--I had 4,000 other really funny names [ LAUGHTER ],
but--and they were also--all sounded like some other networks' shows
but in part because I thought, no what we're supposed to be doing is not saying,
"Watch me! Me! It's all about me!" but instead spend time in the content. So I don't--I guess part of what I-
[ b.h. ] --By the way, that failed. I mean, people became as obsessed with bell hooks--
[ MHP ] Yeah.
[ b.h. ] --and the lowercase did not [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] do--
[ MHP ] --right, yes! This is what--
[ b.h. ] --you know, it didn't do the work that I felt as a spiritual
because for me it was not just a political--it was a spiritual decision at the time, you know?
About who am I and where do I place myself?
And I didn't want to place myself, my personality, my ego, but other people placed it.
So they just reified and fetishized the small bell hooks.
So I realized, you know, how much power we don't have over how our representations are perceived.
And that kind of goes back to my saying that when people think we're angry, or strident, or difficult,
when we may not have that perception of ourselves at all.
When I first y'know published, Aint I A Woman, the white women at South End Press said,
you know, it was such an angry book.
And I didn't know what they were talking about.
Because again, I felt it was a clear book.
It was a book saying things that hadn't been said before, but anger?
You know, I'm one of these Black women
if I'm angry, you will know that I'm angry and I'm gonna--I'm gonna own my anger.
And so I knew that that wasn't the case, and that has been something that I feel is a constant battle.
I've been referring a lot to "Sweet Honey in the Rock":
"when we work for freedom, we cannot rest",
because people are constantly using "anger" and "difficult".
I mean I have to admit I get "difficult" now more than "anger".
You know, "bell is difficult."
[ MHP ] Yeah.
[ b.h. ] You know, when people drop you, or when--from publishing, or something,
and they say "well, bell is difficult." And it's because you raise certain kinds of images.
And once again, I think it's about, Melissa, that interface between our radical political integrity
and the fact that we are in imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. So--
[ MHP ] And you might be, I mean, so I was angry at Ms. Mehta,
her inability to see that it was patently-
[ b.h. ] Uh-oh, mess up all my theories. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
[ MHP ] --Right--no, no, but [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] but not just her.
I was angry with the idea that we continue to propagate this notion,
that to be poor is somehow relaxing.
That people are chillin on public service, like I mean, [ AUDIENCE APPLAUDING ]
and that, you know, that--that riskiness is associated with wealth, right?
So I--the only thing I push back against is the notion that I'm irrational.
I mean, I'm mad, but I'm mad about something, I'm not...
I'm not mad as an inherent aspect of my Blackness, or my womanhood, right? But mad about something.
And you know, I get difficult, but I am difficult.
Like, but, but so do--I mean, like, [ WHISPERING ] so are all the white guys. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
Right? And I mean, I'm legitimately not trying to be funny, in the sense that I know...
so I know that I come to work after my producers come to work,
and I'm a little bit, y'know, demanding and a lot of times, so I--"difficult".
But all the white boys were difficult too in everything from the academy to general life to
you know, right?
And but it's as though that difficulty is presumed to be legitimate whereas ours is illegitimate.
[ b.h. ] Of course, you know, it's funny.
I don't think that I'm difficult. I think that I'm exacting.
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
And precise.
And I mean, I think that words we use are very important because I think that for me
I mean, let's face it, folks.
You don't be a Black woman from a working-class background in America
and write more than thirty books 'cause you sitting around being difficult. You know?
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING, SOME APPLAUSE ]
That work comes out of the amazing discipline of my life,
which I don't necessarily attribute to my ego or me,
but to the recognition of what it takes to get a particular job done,
and that will, as many of you have experienced in this room,
to write, to put other things aside to write, to sit at my computer
and key in the "Beasts of The Southern Wild" piece
while I am sitting there crying
because I just can't take in another image of an abused Black child
being represented as entertaining.
And I am sitting there, and I am writing, but I'm also hurting. [ VOICE STRAINED WITH EMOTION ]
I'm hurting because we can't get past the construct- ion of Black children as little mini-adults
whose innocence we don't have to protect.
You know, who we can consider "cute" if they're being slapped around by an alcoholic father.
You know, not to mention all the other things we could name.
[ MHP ] Well, and then the abuse not only of the character, but actually of Quvenzhané Wallis,
by Black and white communities, in the immediate aftermath of that film,
which I really, really disliked that film.
And watched it in New Orleans, sat in a theater in New Orleans and watched it,
and came home and read your piece.
And in fact, like the moment of Bennett students saying "Have you read bell hooks?",
coming back and reading your piece and saying, "Oh bell, bell's back."
And in part, that the pain, the anger, but also that
this was one of those movies that we were supposed to like,
and we were supposed to say good and nice things about, and was supposed to be "artsy" and "funny"
and you're supposed to be "deep" and "get it",
and you're willingness to say, "Nope, the abuse of a Young Black girl's body as--is not deep.
It's appalling."
[ b.h. ] And also, why can't we teach other people to recognize that this is traumatic, and not "funny",
and not "cute", and that's--that's that again,
"when we work for freedom, we cannot rest" because it's a constant struggle.
I mean, it's interesting because, I can tell you right now.
Ms. Melissa liked "Twelve Years of Slavery", and I really hated it.
I thought that, or I won't even say I hated it. Nah, sentimental clap-trap. [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
But one of the things I felt about it,
and--'cause we don't want to just sit here and act like we schmooze and agree on everything
I felt that it actually negated the Black female voice.
That she was given voice only in so much as she gave expression to Black male emotional feeling.
That the Black male does not have to take responsibility for his own emotional universe,
that Patsy takes that cross.
So it's like, okay not only are you suffering,
but you have to take on you the added burden of articulating this Black man's pain to him, so--
[ MHP ] So, so how much that though
and this is part of why I've approached this film so differently than the other slave films
how much of that is because it is the reading of his autobiography, his slave narrative,
and so that is what he does to her?
Like he does in fact create Patsy in that way, in that text,
so the film reproduces the thing
that he as Black patriarch -even in the context of enslavement- does to her?
[ b.h. ] Yeah, honey, [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
but if the film-maker can create for us that scene with Mrs. Shaw that is not in the book,
then why can't he--I mean, one of the things that I stand on all the time
film does not exist for the purpose of giving us reality.
And I always say, like, if my life is shit, I don't want to go pay $10 or $12 [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
to see it displayed so that we have to ask ourselves.
I guess what I want for us all the time, Melissa, which some of us feel happens on your show,
is a pushing of the imagination--a broadening of how we think about things,
and not this sort of narrowing-down of how we think about things.
And I feel like, you know, I'm tired of the naked, raped, beaten Black woman body.
I want to see an image of Black femaleness that alters our universe in some way.
I mean, Melissa--which was a question I was dying to ask her, so I can ask her tonight
in "Sister Citizen", she really writes critically about Michelle Obama, for example,
as representing that kind of shift.
That we have this transformative image
and I feel like, yes, we started out with this incredible powerful Black female voice,
Michelle Obama, and it got smallerand smaller,
and I wonder if you think that. Or if you think that it kept the momentum that it began with?
[ MHP ] So, for me, First Lady Obama is navigating multiple spaces,
and in some ways, it has retained its bigness and its value, and in other ways it has diminished.
Most importantly, for me, I think there was an active, purposeful,
and I think she she has said it to us,
desire to remove from public space that idea of the Black woman who emasculates her husband.
That she very actively and purposefully moved back from the partnership model that we saw initially.
Not only partnership, but actually, an active critique of her husband.
So when Senator Obama is running in 2007-8,
she has a variety of punch-lines, one of which includes:
"Oh yeah, you know, Barack is stinky in the morning, and he leaves his socks around."
She had another line that was about feeling like a single-parent for much of their early marriage
because he was working down-state.
And so she was taking on all the parenting.
She was the primary bread-winner and she was taking on all the parenting.
And then there was also a narrative about her relationship with Mama Robinson,
and the importance that Mama Robinson had in stepping in as the second parent
when state Senator Barack Obama was down-state.
And that narrative went away after the primaries.
So as soon as, basically they got through, about South Carolina,
and it became clear that it was very possible that Barack Obama could win the Democratic Primary,
Michelle Obama "the wife" became the much more traditional political wife,
who supports in sort of a doe-eyed way, her husband.
But that wasn't the totality.
So on that hand, yes, I would agree, I think she shrinks.
But the other thing I offer though, is this possibility
that she's performing two other things that I do find to be a sustaining pushing of the imagination.
One is about her body,
and this initial desire to dissect First Lady Obama in all the ways that we have dissected women,
Black women in particular, since the Venus Hottentot.
And so rather than talking about Michelle Obama as an embodied person,
we would talk about her arms.
"I want Michelle Obama's arms." "I want Michelle Obama's behind." "I want"--right?
And so it was a rhetorical and public dissection of her into parts,
so that we weren't talking about her, but talking about the parts of her body.
Now for me, the immediate rational reasonable response to that is to stop performing your body,
to--when people are talking about your body to cover.
I mean that's what our grandmothers taught us, right?
"Girl, hold it--hold it in. Keep it tight," right?
Because people--but instead, the First Lady did this sort of extraordinary thing where she was like,
"Oh, so you want to scrutinize? Here I am."
She went even more sleeveless.
She had this amazing--I encourage you to go home
and Google the--just put in "hula hoops" and "First Lady Obama" -
there's this incredible series of her in the first spring that they're in the White House of Spring 2009
and she is running - she's this 6-foot-tall Black woman, barefoot, hula-hooping,
and running across the White House lawn, and it is...
Like when I say that, right, that sounds like some kind of weird racist KKK movie, right?
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
But instead, it's like, it is completely beautiful
and not beautiful in some like "Jackie O." "oh she's like Jackie O."--no.
She's embodied in this very different way,
and the very fact that she goes into obesity politics that in part invites scrutiny of her body,
and then undoubtedly of her daughter's, is sort of an unwillingness to shrink.
So she shrinks in the wife role.
I feel her stand up in the, in the sort of "inviting the scrutiny of the body".
And the last thing I'll say is, when there was this attempt to do
--and it's the one thing I loved about "Twelve Years a Slave"--
to me, "Twelve Years a Slave" was the first time
that there wasn't a cinematic redemption of the white woman slaveholder.
And instead, they are made absolutely complicit and evil and attached
and there's no sense that there is some gender equity that will--nope. [ SOME LAUGHS ]
[ b.h. ] And you didn't see that in "Django"? [ PROLONGED LAUGHTER ] No I mean--
[ MHP ] I can't--I can't talk about "Django", bell.
[ b.h. ] Oh, okay, but I have to say that one of my favorite scenes
is when the two very obedient Black female slaves are on that stairway
and Django tells them to say "goodbye to Ms. Ann", and they've been so obedient and subservient,
but it's like that open door of freedom,
that when they have the opportunity to walk through that open door of freedom,
that hold to me at that moment--the mammy image- is totally deconstructed.
And they're like "goodbye" and he blows her away.
I see that as also that reminder of complicity,
that white women have been complicit in this imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
[ A FEW CLAPS ]
And not just these sort of passive observers or victims.
[ MHP ] I feel you, I feel you. I feel you--
[ b.h. ] -But let's not be--
[ MHP ] But I can't--but "Django", but 'cause see...
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
'cause for me what happened in those first moments in the movie theater, in "Twelve Years a Slave",
when they're taken onto the ship
and then the people who have been watching way too much "Django" are like,
"I can't even believe you're just gonna--why ain't you gonna fight back?!" [ FOOT STOMP ]
Because this is not a fantasy.
Because this is a slave narrative--because there is
because the scene then when he is lynched for days is what happens when you fight.
Because they kill Omar with a shank in like two minutes.
And he had been--because for me, I guess the reason
the reason that that "Django" does not perform that for me is because it's the fantasy.
[ b.h. ] But see, I think it's all fantasy. [ SOME "YEAH'S" FROM AUDIENCE ]
[ MHP ] Okay.
[ b.h. ] I think it's all fantasy. It's all fiction. It's all-
-I mean I have to say the only slavery movie that I can really say really touched me
was "Slavery by Another Name", the fictive documentary.
Because it had those real Black people.
I mean I had the good fortune to see it at Sundance with Eric Holder and his wife,
whose family is part of the film, and part of that experience.
I, myself, okay I'ma say that what I'm tired of in general is sentimentality.
I mean, James Baldwin said that
"sentimentality is the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion.
It is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel."
So I'm actually we can go away from particular movies.
I'm concerned about why is it that
there's a kind of collective response to the plantation culture we as Black people are living in
that has primarily to do with sentimentality.
With people, whether we're talking about "The Butler",
whether we're talking about some of Tyler Perry's stuff [ LAUGHING ],
it's like, you know?
I mean, let's stand and weep and let's weep and weep.
You know, and while we're weeping, the violence against us globally, the global slavery, continues.
And I'm trying to analyze it, and maybe you have some thoughts about it,
but why is there this obsession at this historical moment with sentimentality and melodrama?
'Cause you know my favorite melodrama is imitation of life. [ APPLAUSE ]
I'm old enough to have left [ MELODRAMATICALLY ] "Maaaaama! I diiiiid love you!"
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
"I diiiid love you!"
But again, mama don't get to hear that 'cause she dead.
[ LAUGHTER ] And so, what are your thoughts about that?
This sort of upsurge, I feel, in sentimental portraits of Blackness.
Not--and we don't have to just talk about slavery, 'cause "The Butler" certainly, you know.
[ MHP ] Yes. [ A FEW LAUGHS ] Okay so, so I mean, all right.
So, okay, so there's "Django" on the one hand, then there's "The Butler" and God help me, "The Help".
[ AUDIENCE BOOING AND THEN BREAKING INTO LAUGHTER ] I guess--
[ b.h. ] All of which are sentimental.
[ MHP ] Yes, right, right.
And so I'm just kind of running in my head what you're saying & trying to think through this a little bit.
It certainly felt to me like the "The Help" and "The Butler" are popular culture
responding to the angst of the possibility,
not only of Black empowerment in the personhood of President Obama,
but also, the desire for the magical negro to reappear to make things better.
So that the economic downturn itself, right?
And the sense of white America experiencing, for the first time in 50 years,
the unemployment rates that Black folks have been living with for 60 years, right?
So that the Tea Party can actively, just weeks after President Obama's inauguration,
can sort of take to the mall in anger about a 10% unemployment rate, and [ LAUGHING ]
we know like 10% unemployment rate for Black people would be cause for like, Juneteenth.
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
Right? We'd be happy.
And I--so I presume that part of what happens then,
why we need "The Butler", why we need "The Help", and so maybe-
and I'm gonna pause and think about maybe this is also why we need to bring back slavery.
But I'm not sure--I'll think about it.
But maybe the reason we need to go engage with them in our fictional emotional lives is
because those negroes gave- they solved the problems of America
through their willingness to sacrifice for the American project.
And so, I mean the fact that, I will say at the end of "Twelve Years a Slave",
what happens--he goes to the American court system, right? There is no "Django" fantasy,
like the "fantasy" is that. Right?
What the actual enslaved man does is he goes and takes these men to court.
There is a presumption, even in that moment, that somehow there will be justice available.
The thing that we actually did in the years following emancipation
was to run for office, and buy land, and I mean it's
so maybe there's a desire to reconstruct that version of Black folks
so that we could fix what is currently wrong.
Because that's always been our magical capacity.
[ b.h. ] Or so that we can simply grieve.
We can have a vehicle for the expression of the depth of our grief.
Because I do believe that for some time now,
Black people collectively have been caught in a profound grief.
I've been working on writing about justice & using Martin Luther King's "Where Do We Go From Here?"
And I'm just amazed that Dr. King was talking about fascism.
He was talking about the--he was so prescient that there will be things like the Tea Party.
And the thing that he says that's so amazing is that
there will be this growth--"a native form"- these are his words--"of fascism",
as Black people press forward for equality.
And then he says that awesome insight
that white people would rather destroy democracy than have racial equality.
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM THE AUDIENCE ]
And I think we know that that's not true of all white people,
but we really see that in those of us who live in very depressed white areas, like Appalachia.
I mean, we see it so clearly that people would rather have white supremacy and hierarchy
than any kind of justice.
That people really think "Justice? You know, those negroes have had enough."
"We've given them enough!"
And so I think that that's what troubles me, Melissa, about the sentimentality.
Because I feel it shifts us away from the forms of analysis.
Like, I mean, I am myself- I've been a reader of King,
but I've been away from "Where Do We Go From Here?"
and so when I read it again, and I thought, boy, King was talking about fascism, about what we had to do,
and so much of what he puts out we haven't done.
The critical consciousness.
It just, kind of, in a way, saddened me so deeply because I think that we do live in this space-
Black people--Brown people- of cognitive dissonance.
That we know white supremacy is real.
But at the same time, we would like to walk through our daily lives
as though justice is real, democracy is real, equality is real.
I mean, if anything that I could say about "Twelve Years of Slavery", is that it depicted that.
That we see them walking through their lives, thinking they've made it.
That they can live as--as assimilated Black people in this bourgeois white world.
And there is something so, almost unbelievable,
about his level of innocence about the horrific nature of white supremacy,
because he really believes that there is a whiteness that will protect him.
Like you know? And that to me is like, wow.
If someone can come from that time period and believe that whiteness will protect them.
Then I think about our son, our brother Trayvon Martin, what did he think would protect him?
Did he think that he was in danger of losing his life?
Or did he have that innocence again, about whiteness?
That many of us carry? And many of our young people carry it, especially.
I mean, both here at The New School, everywhere I go,
it is young people especially who will argue that race has ended, that we're in the post-racial-
go ahead, jump in.
[ MHP ] Yeah, yeah, so I would push back against that just a little bit.
That young people primarily--so I do think that millennials may think about race in ways
that are different and more complicated, but they ought to, I mean, 'cause the world is different.
But that Cathy Cohen's research out of the Black Youth Project,
and the writings of The Black Youth Project, 100 and all of them,
do suggest actually that because of their very close contact with the police state and with incarceration,
and with the ways in which this-
so again, the racial naiveté of the kids of the 70's- all right I'ma give that to you-
because we were sort of in this moment, right?
And then, even as Reagan was happening, y'know, Bill Cosby was the, y'know, #1 rated show on TV.
So there were--there were ways in which- I'ma take that critique for the X generation.
But I'm not quite willing to say that of young people of color in their 20's, the generation one under me,
only because the material realities of their vulnerability are so present for them.
Now it may be true that that population is even more stratified--
[ b.h. ] Yes, yes.
[ MHP ] --so for the wealthy children, there is a different reality.
But I don't want to give it to the whole generation- I don't want to say young people don't know.
And my bet is that Trayvon may not. And so, in fact...
So in fact so I want to come back in a minute to using King as a source.
Especially around an understanding of justice
and whether or not there's also a sentimentality that occurs around--
[ b.h. ] Uh-oh.
[ MHP ] --King [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ],
and particularly when we're unwilling to interrogate and push King on his homophobia and sexism.
[ APPLAUSE ] And you know, it's been-
as much as there has been this kind of sentimentality around race produced by mass popular culture,
and "The Help", and "The Butler",
there's also been a sentimentality about King from the critics of President Obama,
who want to say "President Obama is no King"- true. [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
But then they want to say,
"President Obama is no King because he makes alliances" and "because he does"-
you know, "makes compromises", and I'm like, do y'all have any idea who King is?
And the kinds of compromises and alliances and
ask Fannie Lou Hamer if in fact King doesn't look just like the critiques that we have of President Obama.
So it's not--let me be clear--I'm not saying we shouldn't critique President Obama,
what I am suggesting is that when we do so,
by holding up a vision of King that is this version that they created on the Mall
where he steps out of stone, that we can reproduce that sentimentality, particularly when we don't--
[ b.h. ] But that's one King. That's one King.
[ MHP ] Yes.
[ b.h. ] I mean, I'm sorry, but most Americans don't even know The King ever said anything about fascism.
They don't know that he ever said anything
about a mounting white supremacy that would endanger our lives,
so I mean, I'm forgetting his name--I think it's Gary Young-- [ IN BACKGROUND: "THE GUARDIAN" ]
who has done the "I Dream" speech book,
but he talks about how there's this period where there is the sentimental King who's loved,
but then as King begins to talk about imperialism, and to talk about other things,
that then he's talked about as a traitor, he's talked about-
I mean, so I think part of what we're all being called to is a more complex understanding of King.
Because I totally agree with you.
I mean I was--hate to say it but in my budding militant feminism, I had no use for King.
[ SOME LAUGHTER ]
And I barely had use for Malcolm X,
because of what I felt to be their refusal to see
the way patriarchy was hurting and wounding to Black males and females,
and keeping us from the love that we deserve to be able to give one another. And so, you know--
[ MHP ] But I don't mean to throw King out at all. In fact, actually, he was-
[ b.h. ] I didn't think you were...
[ MHP ] But I just worry about the ways--so this is your same concern about sentimentality,
just to echo it back,
that even as we engage the great ideas and the thinkers
and the nuggets of understanding of justice and philosophy,
that because we're so absent, Black women are so absent from the story, we're willing to give a pass.
[ b.h. ] I don't think that anybody would ever say that about bell hooks.
[ MHP ] No, not you. Not you. I'm talking about us.
[ b.h. ] Yes.
[ MHP ] I'm talking about an American vision of who counts as a hero. That's what I mean.
[ b.h. ] That's right.
But I think that, you know, we are still in the construction of a world
where people don't want to accept that it is patriarchy that is killing Black men.
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE ]
That it is an imperialistic patriarchy that threatens the life of Black men of all ages--Black males.
I mean, all this week I've been talking about my little 7-year-old Black male friend, you know,
who is having tremendous problems in predominantly white world,
and I try to talk to his biracial mother and say, "You know, I think his problems have to do with race"
That he looks out in the world and not only does he see nothing that mirrors him,
these other little white kids are telling him he's a monster.
You know, he's "ugly",
and so he finally gets--she says, "Oh I think you're just totally misguided." You know?
And then he finally gets into a fight at school and he says, "You know, white people are just mean."
And so, there's this articulation of a racialized narrative, from a 7-year-old
that knows he's already on the "outs", that there's no "in" for him.
And I wonder about the trajectory of his life,
that he can feel already the depths of that angst and despair, that there's no "in" for him.
And I thought about that when you were talking about Trayvon Martin,
and talking about birthing a girl, a Black girl, as opposed to a Black male child.
Because I do think that Melissa and I both represent that very oppositional reality that I write about.
That we both have, against various odds in our life, invented ourselves.
And I don't think that that radical self-invention is as present for Black males in their life.
Because for us, there is no seduction of power.
There is no idea of, "oh well, if I just do the right thing with my dick, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHS ]
I will be able to enter into the power of patriarchy."
And so I think that that--those things are just so intimate and deep in our lives right now,
this sense of also the distance that's growing between Black females and Black males,
around, I think, these very issues.
[ MHP ] So, this one's hard.
[ b.h. ] I know, we just need hours together.
[ MHP ] I know. I mean, it's so hard because I simultaneously--you know,
I felt it so much on the night of the Zimmerman verdict, and throughout that week,
and throughout the month that have passed.
But when I hear you say the extent to which we've-
that you and I have had a set of challenges over which we've-
but I'm sitting here thinking, okay now if I'm real honest about that,
some of the most difficult, very personal barriers, were placed there by Black men.
Purposefully, actively, maliciously, cruelly, continuously,
whether it was my sexual assault as a teenager by a Black man, who's an adult,
whether it was my [ DISTRACTION IS INAUDIBLE ]- we're live streaming--there are--
[ b.h. ] She's gonna have to talk about [INAUDIBLE ]
[ MHP ] Right, no. No, I, psh. Yes.
And that, by the time that one came along, there had been so many that had-
and, so for me--it's interesting for you to say this-
because I'm light-skinned,
and cis, and straight, and have a white parent, and have access to all kinds of privileges from birth,
my bet is that I have been seduced by power.
Now I don't think that mine comes at the end of my penis,
but my bet is that my proximity to whiteness
has in fact allowed me over and over again a level of racial naiveté,
and a willingness to believe that if I could just get the right white folks to give me cover,
that it will be okay. [ AUDIENCE CHEERING ]
And I think that has everything to do with being embodied in this body, and not in-
so, that even as we talk about "The Black Woman's Experience",
that like, the different kinds of Black women's bodies in which we end up--
[ b.h. ] But then let's talk about the point at which you realized that angle happened.
And then you have--
[ MHP ] Oh, and I don't know that that is true.
I mean, I show up on TV and say words
because at the moment I have the cover of a powerful white man.
Like at the moment a white man is like, "okay you can sit on TV and say words"
and the moment that that powerful white man no longer wants me to sit on TV and say words,
I will not be allowed to sit on TV and say words anymore.
[ b.h. ] But every time you speak, you have a choice.
And I think that part of this huge following that's here tonight for you, and that's out there in the world,
is because you have exercised that choice, in a way puts you at risk,
in a way that makes it seem that yes,
that power force larger than you could shut you down at any moment,
but you don't allow that to happen.
And that's the strength that I'm talking about, that's a different kind of-
it's what it means to be in resistance.
I mean, all week I've been quoting my beloved Paulo Freire:
"We cannot enter the struggle as objects in order to later become subjects."
So you exercise the power of a redemptive subjectivity, an oppositional subjectivity right there,
in the belly of the beast, knowing all the time that you could be stopped at any moment,
but you don't not do it.
You don't express the views of the covering person that you described.
You're challenging yourself, and we challenge you.
[ MHP ] But I still think of the riskier thing, of the braver thing, as-
because you write, because television killed my writing.
I haven't written since the show, because you write it exists forever.
It's not ephemeral in the same way that broadcast is.
And it feels to me so much more risky to write it,
both because once you've written it, I can then quote it back to you.
I can challenge you on it. I can hold you accountable to it.
I can--but also because there will come a point when you are gone
and the 18-year-old will still pick it up, and still read it, and still discover Black Feminism,
and then you did something, bell, that is--strikes me as extremely dangerous to one's ego,
which is you walked away from the brightest glare of public life.
You returned to community,
and the work that you are doing now feels to me like it gets rewarded in all of the ways that this system
the capitalist--the system that you named so we can see the water that we're swimming in-
isn't--like, the rewards won't be those rewards.
[ b.h. ] But it gives me that ground to stand on from which I can sustain my oppositional self.
I mean, all throughout this week and last night, we had an amazing Sister Circle of women of color,
but a lot of those women were articulating how hard it is to remain oneself.
Working in these systems, working here at the New School.
And so I think partially, I mean, when I left New York City, I will just never forget that day.
I'd been thinking suicidal thoughts.
I was standing on the corner, with two shoes that didn't match, and all this other stuff.
I knew that it was time to go.
And to return to some type of foundation that could allow me to sustain myself.
You know, when you've written a book that sells, and it's selling really well,
but then suddenly you're told, "well we don't want to publish you anymore".
But no reasons given, no explanations,
and all of those things that as Black women testified throughout this week--they make you feel crazy.
They make you feel like "okay I did the things that I was supposed to do, I arrived at the destination."
And all of the sudden I come to work one day and I'm locked out.
[audible compassionate reaction from audience]
And so I think that for me, it's this decision to constantly think about what nurtures that radical self,
what holds me up?
You know, Shirley Chisholm holds me up. [ A FEW CHEERS ]
I mean, when I- her "Unbought and Unbossed" taught me,
much as Melissa and other people are saying that I taught them things-
she taught me that I could be whoever I wanted to be without having to lie down,
without having to be vulnerable and naked to the oppressor. [ SOME CLAPS ]
But what I also learned from her was that the rewards would be lesser,
that one would have to give up something.
You know when I read, a year or so ago,
and bell hooks talks--is talked about in "Ms." as "missing in action",
and I think, what are they talking about? I'm sitting here writing. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
You know?
And there are things again- I talked with the students-
and Melissa will respond and will begin to close-- open it up for questions-
that when you are committed, you often have to do things you don't want to do.
I am not interested in "Lean In," okay? You know? [ APPLAUSE ]
But I wrote a piece about it because I was very disturbed by what I felt was its overall impact.
And because I wasn't particularly interested, writing the piece was torturous.
I was so unhappy. And people kept telling me, "Well why don't you stop? Why don't you"
And all of you who know me know that I don't use, myself, much of the Internet,
so it's always in collaboration with other feminist sisters and brothers,
that things bell hooks get on the Internet.
And so I had my colleague, Stephanie Troutman, saying,
"bell, you agonized over this. You did it. Let me put it on the Internet for you."
But that has been my story in writing from the beginning, that I have to say some things,
but I am not always somebody who wants to say them.
I want somebody else to jump up and say them, and take the heat. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
[ MHP ] Yeah.
[ b.h. ] And so, I mean, she said things. She takes the heat.
And I just don't want you to downplay that, despite our privilege.
I mean, I have an enormously privileged life, and y'all know.
Y'all up in here hear me talk about my cars and my houses and different things, my cheerio privilege,
leisure, solitude, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't require courage, sacrifice.
It doesn't mean that there isn't a bell welter of pain, because there often is.
So that we carry on precisely because of those people who we stand looking out at them-
Lorraine Hansberry--so many people we could name, who remind me what I'm here to do.
You know, it was Lorraine Hansberry who first taught me to start thinking critically about love.
When she asked "Are Black People loving people?" Or are we so damaged and so traumatized?
So that those issues of who we are and how we make our voices heard continue because, you know,
it's funny how, Melissa, I feel very strongly because I have lost family to death young recently.
[ VOICE BREAKING ]
I feel very strongly that I can't count on a white racist world to keep the bell hooks book going.
You know, and I laugh to people when say, "Oh bell, why don't you digitalize all these books?"
and I say, "Yeah, the moment they're electronic, a delete button can take them out of the universe,"
[ APPLAUSE ]
and so there is this way in which I'm struggling with how do we protect our legacies as Black females?
How do we protect our voices? [ APPLAUSE ]
Because y'know there's a hundred, some hundreds of men, Black and white and whatever,
who we don't know anything about what they ever did,
but they have their institute, they have their whatever, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER ]
and so I am asking myself at this critical juncture of my life,
what am I doing to care for the legacy of my work?
I am not assuming that that work, despite all of you wonderful people that are here tonight, will live,
if I don't do the necessary things to continue its life.
I'm going to close. Melissa's going to say stuff and we're going to have a few questions.
[ MHP ] I think we can go to questions. I think...
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER THEN MORE APPLAUSE ]
I think there's a couple of mics in the audience.
[ b.h. ] And you know, ask your question quickly
'cause with Buddhist compassion I will tell you not to give that speech. Your name? [ LAUGHTER ]
[ KALIMA DE JESUS ] So my name is Kalima De Jesus,
and I have a question regarding the push-back around "Twelve Years a Slave".
And I would like to have a conversation about- bell hooks, you said you talked about feeling like
you've seen enough of the Black woman body who's been sexually assaulted, and I'm wondering
how do we find a balance about telling that history
of the sexual assault that Black women have endured years & years up until 2013, at this particular hour,
while white women have stayed complacent? And imagine it beyond that?
Holding that balance in a time when we are not being taught that at all.
[ b.h. ] But we are so much more than that, and that's really more the question.
The question is not how we can't image that or that it's not imaged.
It's all of us and who we are that's not imaged. And why are we not?
Why is there no world that wants to see the life someone like me leads as a Black female?
Economically self-sufficient, solitary, disciplined, writing?
Why is that not interesting,
not as interesting as images of if I were being beaten, raped, if the scars were on my body?
That's what concerns me more than even the sentimental slavery or whatever-
is, why are we not--where's our decolonized image?
[ MHP ] So, you know, it's interesting because part of what I liked about it
was that we got to see Patsy making the dolls, and we got to see her even in the context of--
[ b.h. ] I even hated the little dolls.
[ MHP ] Well, [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] so for me what the dolls meant,
and even her ability in the context of the horror was those late-night performative dances,
that in both of those contexts, she nonetheless finds- she's still human in them, right?
And that her humanity isn't entirely oppositional.
So we see her humanity in her oppositional moment about the soap,
but there's also that she can just be playful, or that-
that social death is in fact a falsehood in understanding what slavery was,
that there was still humanity in it.
I mean, so we have a reading of the film differently.
That said, this notion of the abused Black woman's body as becoming-
so I started fairly early on in the show talking about being a sexual assault survivor.
And, you know, I've been doing campus work around sexual assault forever.
I mean, it's not like it's a new thing.
No one in my family, you know, it wasn't a new discovery.
But I'm not sure that the people at the organization where I work knew it one way or another,
but they sort of like it.
Not that they like that I was abused, but they like me when I'm the sentimental person.
So they like when I write the letter to Trayvon Martin's mother, to Sybrina Fulton,
which is legitimately how I felt, Black mother to Black mother, but is, as bell was saying earlier,
but what it takes both to write it, and to deliver it on air,
and then to live with the consequences of having it delivered on air, is a lot.
It's very costly. It's very expensive.
So, it is both something that is meaningful to do, and very expensive.
And so because it's very expensive, I don't want to do it a lot, right?
I want to do it, but I don't want to do it every week.
It's just because shit hurts.
And then like, I remember when I did one of the letters around sexual assault
and then we had done it at like 10:30, so I had an hour-and-a-half of show left.
So you know I sat down and I said to myself,
okay sexual assault survivor, now it's time for dissociation.
Now we're going to practice our dissociation practice... here we go!
All right, half-and-a-half of now talking about Syria and something else.
So it's costly, so I don't like to do it a lot.
[ b.h. ] Yes. And you shouldn't do it a lot.
[ MHP ] Right, but that's what--but, back to the market--that's the market.
People like that Melissa. When Melissa is angry, yelling at the economist, right?
[ b.h. ] I'll say "clear", and "exact".
[ MHP ] Exacting. When Melissa is goofy, as I pretty often am,
and sometimes kind of goofy over-the-line,
sometimes goofy over-the-line wearing feminine products in my ears. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
The desire not to see me--I mean people say to me, "That's not you. You're not that. Don't do that."
Well of course I'm that. Of course I'm silly and goofy and crazy and over-the-top,
and sometimes I'm kind of, you know, sexy and bad and fly and all that.
And sometimes I am mad, and sometimes I am very sad, and hurt, and in pain.
Like, because, well, shit. I'm human. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
But I do think--and on this one, bell- this notion of range-
like not only in our consumption in popular culture,
but our desire to consume "The Strong Black Woman"
who overcomes the worst circumstances,
is the thing that we like the best.
And I say "we" like both the broad American public, Black people, "we like strong black women".
But we pitiful Black women, funny Black- we already know we don't like funny Black Women-
but you can't get a job, right? [ LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE ]
We are live streaming--I keep forgetting we are on the air. [ LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE ]
Right? [ OVERLAPPING WORDS, APPLAUSE ] No job and I get really get bad--
[ b.h. ] So what we're really talking about is that whole-
the whole question of what does it mean to have optimal emotional well-being?
'Cause when you have optimal emotional well-being, you can be whole.
You can be the diversities of who yourself is, and so you're saying...
you know, we have to resist again and again, people trying to deny us that space of emotional well-being,
by keeping us trapped into the plantation culture that says "this is who we are".
Your name, your quick question?
Ariel Rojas: Oh! [ LAUGHTER ] You caught me by surprise.
No, I was thinking about your, the finishing optimal...
[ b.h. ] Well-being.
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Well-being. All right, so my name is Ariel
and I'm the president and founder of a non-profit organization called Transdiaspora Network.
And I work with inner-city kids.
I always participate in these forums in a very candid way because I do believe that dialogue
and communication is a good way to create ourness.
Yeah, yeah I'm getting there. [ LAUGHTER ]
But I'm putting this in context, because for me,
as the leader of a non-profit organization working with inner-city kids,
it's kind of--to see the disconnection between the high cultural elite of Black people producing culture,
with what's going on in the inner-city Black sort-of-plantation neighborhoods.
That sometimes you see girls that even when they turn 17
they haven't even been on the Brooklyn Promenade to see that view of Manhattan, that is very popular--
[ MHP ] You gotta ask a question though.
[ ROJAS ] No, no, I'm going to ask a question.
[ MHP ] Okay, okay, yeah.
[ ROJAS ] Okay so how we--how we the Black Leaders, can create a contrast,
not to white men, but how we can create a colorful palette,
in order to educate the young generations with these powerful contents that you create,
in order to fight injustice.
[ MHP ] I just--I gotta disagree with you that culture is made by the Black elite.
You know, I live in New Orleans. The culture is made actually by the inner-city kids.
The most powerful diasporic cultural tradition currently operating in the world
was made by Black and Puerto Rican kids in the inner cities of this city.
Now what I will say is, living in New Orleans,
in a place where poor people are the people who create the culture that is then--
[ b.h. ] --marketed.
[ MHP ] --that is then sold.
It's like so then now the consensus on both the Right and the Left is that--what's happening, for example,
the New Orleans school systems is good. This is improvement in the schools.
And of course one of the most important things
is that we ripped out all music education from the schools.
So I actually don't think we need to go teach kids culture.
I think we just need to give young people-- wealthy and poor--
the tools, and they will create the culture.
[ ROJAS ] That's what I'm talking about. Creating the tools.
[ MHP ] I mean, well yeah. Resources. Resources. I mean, for me it's resources. Like I don't--
[ b.h. ] I just--
[ MHP ] --I don't think we need to go tell them what to do--
[ ROJAS ] No, no, I'm talking more about tools and ways--
[ b.h. ] --I--I want to add--add to this--
[ ROJAS ] to defend themselves because what happens when they ...
[ OVERLAPPING / INAUDIBLE... AUDIENCE BECOMES UNSETTLED ]
[ OTHER AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Brother, we don't talk while she was talking.
We should answer up someone else's questions. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHTER AND ANNOYANCE ]
[ b.h. ] I want to say that plantation culture is not just the culture that the poor lived within.
We are all living within plantation culture.
Our roles, our resources, are maybe radically different,
but it's part of some false notion of privilege to believe that we are somehow not touched
by the plantation culture that the very very people on the bottom are living.
Harsher lives, riskier lives, but the plantation culture is what the U.S. is making in the world,
and it is what is sustaining here. Your question, my sweet, your name?
[ TANYA FIELDS ] My name's Tanya Fields. I was actually on Melissa's show last month.
[ b.h. ] Yes, I saw you.
[ FIELDS ] I'm a low-income mom living in New York,
and my daughter's first board book was "Happy to be Nappy".
[ b.h. ] All right. [laughing]
[ FIELDS ] And the words that you guys are saying right now are so sustaining.
As a low-income Black mother, I have been struggling to find my voice,
and so I've been using my platforms: Twitter, Facebook,
and talking about this being a whole person,
what it means to be unmarried with three baby daddies and four kids. [ AUDIENCE AGREEMENT ]
The pushback that I am often feeling is not from the white folks in the community,
it is from the other sisters who tear me down, [ AUDIENCE: "MMHM", APPLAUSE ]
tell me that the reason I am low-income is because I didn't have the insight to choose good men,
that I should have kept my hand out and my mouth closed, and my legs closed, and kept my hand out.
And so I'm trying to figure out as we talk about this plantation culture,
as I try to rise above my circumstances
and literally create meals that the babies in my community can eat,
how do we--it stops you from wanting to have that voice.
I have people who tell me,
"When you talk about being low-income, don't talk about feeding your kids on food stamps.
You don't need an audience for that. Suffer in shame and in silence.
The situation that you are feeling is your own, and is a product of your own bad choice."
I am pregnant with my fifth child and just had this man walk out on me.
How do you wake up every morning and-
I consider myself a Black Feminist but some days it's just so hard to get out of the bed
and face other Black people. [ APPLAUSE ]
[ b.h. ] Take it, mom. I said "take it." I actually said, "take it, mom."
[ MHP ] So that is, that is exactly what the whole thing is designed to do.
The language you used-- "sit alone in your shame and suffer alone".
So, um--[ VOICE BREAKING ]
[ APPLAUSE ]
[ SPEAKING INAUDIBLY AWAY FROM MIC, COMFORTING TONE] [ SNIFFLING, MORE APPLAUSE* ]
[ SPEAKING INTO MIC AGAIN ] Um--so it's just to say that-
-so, you know, I could turn into my academic self
which says that the reason that people who are most vulnerable to being in your exact same circumstance
are the ones who most want to shame you, is because--it's the same reason that-
it's the sorority girls on campus who say
that you gotta keep yourself from getting raped by not drinking.
It's because--it's the same reason that the churches that are growing among Black folks
are the prosperity health-and-wealth ones, instead of liberation and theology churches, right?
And it is because it is much easier to believe that we can solve inequality
by pulling up our pants, or keeping our legs closed.
Right, so it allows you to wipe away all of the structural realities that require collective action,
and that require work that goes over and past your own life.
So if it's just your individual decision-making- that I'm safe from it.
So as long as I make a different decision,
I will never be vulnerable to poverty, or to heart-ache, or to pain. [ APPLAUSE ]
And I will just say, you know, that your point about making all the right choices--right?
So I can remember the point at which I became a single parent,
and I was like, okay but whoa wait a minute.
I did everything right, and I got my degree first, and then I got married, and-
no, actually, I got my degree first, then I got married, then I bought a house, then I got pregnant.
I'm supposed to be all good, and that motherfucker be like "Peace out".
And went, and just was- and there I stood, with a baby.
Now I stood there with a baby and a degree and as a home-owner.
So the shame? I didn't have to--so because it's not really about being a single-parent.
It's about being poor. The thing you're supposed to be ashamed of is being poor.
And so it's as though--I will just say that that shaming--it is a defense mechanism
to keep people from having to do the hard work of organizing,
and it is the most dangerous thing in marginalized communities.
It is the most dangerous thing, because then we do not organize,
because we can just say that "if only you had made different choices",
then everything would be fine". [ APPLAUSE ]
[ b.h. ] I think we have to remember constantly
that shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy,
because shame produces trauma.
And trauma often produces paralysis. [ AUDIENCE: "YEAH"s ]
So when that sister said that there are days when she can't get out of bed,
lots of us experience that sense of paralysis.
So that that healing--I have to go back to--I'm not going to belabor it--but to emotional well-being,
because we've got to have some mechanisms to resist what is out there,
to resist the constant shaming.
Your name?
[ CHARMIN ] Hi I'm Charmin. I go to CUNY
and I just want to say that this was one of the most beautiful audiences I've ever seen.
[ b.h. ] Hello, yay!
[ CHARMIN ] And I'd like to extend my invitation to more public universities and institutions,
where people that look like us are wanting your presence,
especially because you guys don't come here too often, so just want to put that out there.
And I also wanted to say that as a political organizer that is looking to demilitarize CUNY,
kicking Petraeus out of CUNY, [ CROWD CHEERS ] kicking militarism out of CUNY,
how do we deal with those hyper-masculine personalities that have values of anti-imperialism
and anti-racism but end up making me feel uncomfortable in spaces of radical organizing,
where we're talking about these really, really important issues
but understanding that imperialism is in your blood, brotha, and that's exactly what you're showing me
when you're shutting me up to cut the mic, right?
So I just want a healthy way to deal with that sis, 'cos I cant do anti-military organizing right now,
just 'cos of the hyper-masculinity and the way that it's going but I am invested, you know.
[ b.h. ] Okay--okay. [ LAUGHTER ]
[ CHARMIN ] I'm sorry. I just got interrupted, that's all.
[ b.h. ] Well, I don't--I'm not going to have a long answer to that, but I also want to encourage us,
as we talked about in my undergraduate class today,
when we talk about hyper-masculinity, if what we mean is patriarchy, that is what we need to say.
[ CHARMIN ] Okay.
[ b.h. ] Because we have to have a space to love, to revere, and to honor that which is masculine,
but is not patriarchal.
And if we are constantly equating the two,
then we are part of the assault on masculinity on Black males.
[ APPLAUSE ] Are you--do you want to speak to that?
[ MHP ] So I appreciate you dividing up the masculinity and the patriarchy.
I think that's a critical one that we don't do and part of what I would say is, mhmm.
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Yep. And... true.
[ MORE LAUGHTER ] And y'know, in very public ways, bell hooks and I have both encountered that-
the entire history of Black women's organizing.
But then I'll always say that Black women have performed that, particularly straight Black women
have performed that around queer women of color.
Privileged women of color have performed that around undocumented and poor women.
And even within LGBT movements, cis women, even cis gay women,
perform that around trans women.
[ A FEW CLAPS ]
And so that, I think it's part of the importance of pulling out hyper-masculinity,
because you can be quite femme and be performing the same--
[ b.h. ] Patriarchal bull.
[ MHP ] --patriarchal bull, taking the mic, right?
So it's just to say that that "uh-huh"?
That's why it's easier to say "pull up your pants and close up your legs", because organizing is hard.
Because people--I mean, who doesn't love people like in theory? But the actual people?
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
I mean, the actual people are very annoying, and hard, and difficult,
and you have to give a little and get a little and it's aaahhh. [ LAUGHTER ] So, welcome.
[ EBONY MURPHY-ROOT ] Hello, my name is Ebony Murphy-Root,
I'm a middle-school English teacher from Hartford, Connecticut, currently working here.
[ SOME CLAPPING ]
And Dr. hooks, you've talked a lot about Black and white female schoolteachers.
[ AWAY FROM MIC ] You obviously cover a lot of ed reform in your show, Dr. Harris-Perry.
Where are the Black female voices? The Black female working, schoolteacher voices in ed reform?
Because I feel like oftentimes, working as a public- school teacher in Hartford Connecticut,
working now, that we are being blamed for a culture that we did not create,
for problems that come in every day at schools that we didn't--we didn't create.
And yet we are being dehumanized and excluded from this conversation. [ APPLAUSE ]
[ MHP ] Well, I mean, you asked where you are. You are the targets, dear.
You are the reason that there is a powerful anti-union, anti-teacher
"go get the TFA Ivy Leaguers to teach the babies instead".
I mean, it is not a mistake that the sector that is dominated by educated women of color
performing a task of reproduction
is the one where there is bipartisan consensus to destroy it. [ AUDIENCE AGREEMENT ]
So that's where you are. You've got the target on your back, and it is the very reality
that those are the bodies most impacted by the dehumanization movement,
by the chartering movement, and by the movement to bring TFAs into and actually staff-hold.
So, TFA is a lovely program at its initiation,
which is the idea that wealthy, Ivy-League, privileged children,
should go and spend a little time in the world before they run off to run the world, right?
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
It's actually a really--and I mean I know I'm saying that sort of sarcastically--but it's a smart idea, right?
Before you go off and make policy, before you go to Wall Street, before you go and run for office,
spend two years in the classroom.
Because what that does is it was a program whose focus was on the young person, right?
Not the student, you aren't going in to save the student.
You're going in to save yourself, right? And that's good. Like, yes! Great idea. We should do that.
Because then you would go get a little humility,
and you would sit quietly and listen to a teacher who would tell you things, and you would learn,
and you would observe, and you would walk away.
The problem with TFA came when it stopped being about the salvation of the privileged,
who needed a little saving of their full humanity in order to be better policy-makers,
and instead, became that somehow they would save the children and the classrooms
from professional teachers who'd committed their lives to working for very little pay,
very few resources, in schools. [ APPLAUSE ]
So, yeah, that's why you're not at the table.
Because you're the thing that we are seeking to destroy in education reform.
[ b.h. ] Okay we are going to hear these questions and try to answer.
We'll hear the three of them because our time is coming to a close.
Your question, sweetheart, your name?
[ ZEYNAB ] My name is Zeynab, and my question is, was there a moment for both of you?
Was there a moment when you realized that this is it-
I need to write, I need to say something- I need to talk?
And how did you push back against the urge? I mean, like, if you had the urge to silence yourself?
[ b.h. ] Okay, so we'll hold that. Your question?
We're going to hear all these four questions and--yes, darling?
[ NIKISHA LEWIS ] Hi, my name is Nikisha Lewis, and you talked about the gap
that currently exists between men and women in the Black community.
And so, as I'm thinking about Renisha McBride today, and the outrage that doesn't
I feel, doesn't yet exist over her life
the loss of her life, as it existed over the loss of Trayvon Martin's life.
I'm really angry and fighting back tears in my work every day.
So how do we bridge this gap, this divide, in our community, so that we can value all of our lives,
Black women's and girls' lives, as much as we value the men and boys that we love dearly?
[ b.h. ] Okay, and--?
[ VIRGINIA ] Hi My name is Virginia, I'm here with Public Allies, and my question is,
how instrumental is the male and/or white ally in the movement against patriarchy?
[ MIXED AUDIENCE REACTION OF TALKING AND LAUGHING ]
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] Hi, I have a question about African-American imperialism,
and the mode at which we are privileged in our idea of Blackness,
and we throw Blackness around as if we all understand what that is,
and we travel the world--there is a world out there, a global world out there that we exist in,
that identifies with Blackness as an othering.
so how do we leave room for that conversation
when we start to inflict capitalist ways of thinking on other people? [ APPLAUSE ]
[ b.h. ] Well, I'm going to start with that question of "Why can't we value Black female lives?"
Until we challenge patriarchy, there is going to be no valuing of Black women's lives
over the small valuing of Black male lives that takes place, because the very structure militates against it.
So, I mean, one of the things I've always felt so strongly, and really express in "We Real Cool",
is the depths of Black male woundedness by patriarchal terrorism.
And until that--those wounds get addressed in some way,
I don't think we're going to get the respect, the recognition, the care,
because I was thinking about how even Oscar Grant's mother is portrayed at the end of the film,
as blaming herself.
She should not have, you know, not that we get a full-on calling-out of the system that destroys him.
[ MHP ] So, yes, and, I think part of what happens is
so I assume when you say "we value", I assume you mean "Black communities"
part of what I would suggest is that what works for us
is tropes that are connected to something that we understand.
And this is something--I'm still thinking about your critique of "Twelve Years a Slave".
And so, one of the tropes that we understand about Black women's suffering
is the idea of a Black woman raped by the white male slaveowner, right? That one we get.
So, if you go back to the case, the Duke lacrosse case, right?
You had immediate community mobilization.
I mean, that day, that night called for action [ SWOOSH! ]
because that trope--"Black woman sexually assaulted by white man, in South, on old plantation"-
like, we--that one we understood. We had a thing to hang it on.
We know the story that it is, and we can tell it.
Now, so pause for me on that a moment on that, and let's go to all...
various stories about Black men's victimization,
and the ways in which those stories often hang on the trope that we know that is the lynching trope.
So we like to forget, because it's painful to remember,
that in the week after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
during his hearing about Anita Hill said, "This is a high-tech lynching",
that the public opinion polls showed that greater than 50% of African-Americans
supported Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the bench.
Now I think that's because he used the trope of lynching, and that we're like "oh yeah, right!
"Black man, white"--you know--"Joe Biden and the other white guy saying mean things"
"that looks like lynching--I know that trope."
And of course, no one's ever been lynched for what they've done to a Black woman.
White men don't posse up to go get a Black man for what he did to a Black woman.
But that story is why there was increased radio play of R. Kelly after he raped a child in our community.
It's why people don't want to believe Mike Tyson did it, right?
Because we get the "vulnerable Black man facing white lynch mob"
that's the story that the Trayvon Martin story fits into for us.
Marissa Alexander doesn't fit our story
because she is shooting a gun at an abusive Black husband coming at her.
We don't have--we may know that... we may intimately know that story,
but we don't have a "story"--a trope, a thing--that is the abuse of Black women's bodies by Black men.
And in the case of Renisha, I don't think we yet have coped with.
Because when the Trayvon Martin moment happened, and the Zimmerman verdict happened,
all of us were saying, "these are the conversations that we have with our sons,
about our sons' public safety".
And I think we have missed how much our girls are equally vulnerable in that space. [ APPLAUSE ]
So we don't have a good... we don't have a good trope.
We don't have a thing to call why a white man opening the door--right,
so allegedly what we think we know at this point,
is that he opens the door and sees her as a physical threat to him.
We don't--like, what is the story? So we know "white man creeping down and raping the Black woman",
but we don't know "white man afraid of Black woman knocking at his door".
Like, what is that story, right? So part of it is, I think just a general devaluation, but the other part of it is,
I think if it doesn't fit a story that we have easily available to us?
And there aren't very many stories about our victimization that are easily available,
that we can employ and use, and so we're going to have to generate those.
I do think that's part of it, at least.
[ b.h. ] So there was the question about writing. Was there a moment?
And for me those moments are just ongoing and endless,
but they began for me as a girl in Virginia Street Baptist Church,
when I was encouraged to write for our church magazine and stuff like that.
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
[ MHP ] Are you--dear, are you a writer?
[ ZEYNAB, BARELY AUDIBLE, NO MIC ] Yeah. [ LAUGHTER ]
[ MHP ] Do you feel that impulse to write?
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah.
[ MHP ] And you feel it even when there's other stuff to be done?
[ ZEYNAB ] Nah, I don't think so. [ LAUGHTER ]
[ MHP ] So I wonder, 'cause you asked about the silencing.
Do you self-edit when you're writing, like you're pulling back?
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah.
[ MHP ] Only when you're writing for yourself,
or when you're also writing... so if you're writing for yourself, it's all there.
But if you're writing for an audience, you're pulling it back? Who's the audience typically, teachers?
[ ZEYNAB ] Yeah. Or like--
[ b.h. ] I'm going to have to speed you on.
[ MHP ] Yes, okay I'm sorry. I just--my bet is that question wasn't about us, right?
Who cares what I think about writing? My bet is that question is about you and that you're working on it.
But if you ask that question, and the real question is "Am I a writer?", the answer is "Yes, of course you are."
If you ask that question, of course you're a writer.
And if you are, if you're self-editing, at least find some friendly audiences,
some safe audiences where you can write without... it's okay to self-edit to feel fearful of your audience...
I think that's okay. Particularly when you're a young writer,
but also just make sure you have some audiences, someone who's reading for you,
who is a safe place for you to write.
[ b.h. ] Okay, are you answering the imperialism question? [ A FEW LAUGHS ]
[ MHP ] No, you want to answer that one? [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
I get in too much trouble behind this, yeah. [ LAUGHING AND CLAPPING ]
[ b.h. ] I'm going to be honest. Part of my silence is I've forgotten parts of the question.
I didn't--I didn't forget the imperialist--
[ MHP ] No-no, it's the [ INAUDIBLE ] of Black versions-
American versions of Blackness, right? And capitalism, right?
[ b.h. ] There was the patriarchal allies, which was the woman behind you.
[ MHP ] Yeah, yeah, we're coming to that one.
[ b.h. ] Yeah.
[ AUDIENCE MEMBER ] I think that it happens within both men and women,
and it does happen to men and women.
But but the implications of privilege with our ideas of Blackness,
being that Blackness has changed over time, like you're talking about the President in office right now,
and him being an African-American imperialist essentially,
and subconsciously that affecting all of us who do that as well, when we travel.
So there's a world out there that we don't identify with all the time.
[ b.h. ] Well I think you've stated it. I mean that's what's real.
I mean what's scary is why people don't want to face that reality
why they want to still pretend that there's some solidified Blackness, and not--I mean,
that there's tremendous crisis in Blackness
because our class differences and separations grow more intense daily.
And we're asked to believe that there's still some kind of R&B Blackness that unites us.
[ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Will you take the patriarchal question? And then we're going to close.
[ MHP ] Yeah. Right, well, I think--we remember the patriarchy question.
So, I guess the one thing I would say is--
[ VIRGINIA ] I'll just say it again.
So how instrumental is the male and/or white ally in our movement against patriarchy?
[ b.h. ] I've actually been questioning this use of the word "ally" [ SOME LAUGHTER ]
because I think that if someone is standing on their own beliefs,
and their own beliefs are anti-patriarchal, anti-sexist, they are not required to be anybody's ally.
They are on their front line in the same way that I'm on my front line.
And I can tell you, women, when you find those men in patriarchy--gay, straight, trans*, whatever...
that are on the front line, we recognize them. The sad truth is that there are so few of them.
[ AUDIBLE AGREEMENT FROM AUDIENCE ]
Okay. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING AND APPLAUDING ] Are you saying something?
[ MHP ] Yeah, I mean, I guess I--so one thing I would--so this is maybe my--this is my academic
this is my professorial self.
I worry anytime we expect--so sometimes one of the pieces of language used, particularly in the academy-
-maybe it's also used in media--I'm not so sure- is this idea of role modeling.
"We need you to be there in that body to role-model to other people who have bodies similar to yours,
that these things are possible."
And I have very--I have very mixed emotions about that role-modeling idea,
in part because I think that the imagination of Black Americans is...
our sort of critical, moral, creative imagination is one of our great accomplishments in the U.S. context.
Our ability to imagine freedom in the context of intergenerational chattel bondage,
our ability to believe God loves us when there is no empirical evidence that God does love us,
our willingness to engage. [ LAUGHTER ]
Right, so I actually don't know that we need to cease-
-I mean, I think part of our genius is that we don't need to see it to nonetheless believe it & pursue it.
And in fact, even in as much as that is, I think a unique--as Cornel West would say...
a unique gift of Black people to the American Project, right?
I mean that's the language that he uses. It's one of our gifts, particularly in the post-9/11 moment.
That as much as that is true, it's also been true of even the nastiest low-down racist patriarchs of our nation.
So my daughter--and I promise I'm going to end-
my daughter is in 6th grade and she had to learn the Declaration of Independence,
the little, you know, "We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal,
and endowed with their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,
and governments are instituted among men to protect these rights"--right, okay?
She was hot. Mad. [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ]
She was like, "This is some old bull. That was not true! 1776, we were slaves, we couldn't vote."
She was mad, she was walking around the house, mad! [ AUDIENCE LAUGHING ] Mad!
Now part of this 'cause she's in sixth grade, so she's mad that the sun comes up, so she's just mad.
But she was mad behind this, and--but, so Thomas Jefferson is vile. Like he just is vile, right?
He owns his own children at various points.
But--and this is the final ally--but he didn't write a document that says,
"We think that maybe, possibly, old white men with money are equal, in a few kind of ways,
and maybe they could get a gut"
that's what the Constitution says, [ LAUGHTER ]
but the Declaration of Independence has a moral imagination
beyond the empirical reality of the 1776 Monticello Mountain.
And so I don't know that I need patriarchs and white men and...
but what I do... what is possible on that kind of allied position,
is for them to imagine something bigger than what is in this moment.
And so as much as I've had my little, you know, critiques about--like, you know,
the people who work at MSNBC, in the leadership, those old white guys,
who are rich and powerful and sit around a table,
and maybe someday... maybe today... will fire me, and everyone else [ LAUGHTER ]
they nonetheless did... they could say,
"oh well, what if put a little gay girl on here and what if we put a little Black girl on here."
"And maybe--oh and let the Asian girl"...and how...
and so those are things that required a little bit of... it's not revolution.
[ MHP ] It's the opposite of revolution, but it is a little imagination.
[ b.h. ] ...at heart, also, our movement away from binaries.
So we would like to leave you with this whole notion
that if you work for freedom, one of the ways that you can work for freedom,
is to change your mind and to move away from the space of binaries, of simplistic either-or, both-and,
and to be able to look at the picture that offers us complexity.
I want to thank Stephanie Browner, Heather and Jennifer, for all their work,
and my sister, my soul sister, [ LAUGHTER ]. Melissa Harris-Perry, thank you for being here.
[ MHP ] Thank you, bell. Thank you, bell.
[ PASSIONATE APPLAUSE AND CHEERING... ]