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