8:36 p.m., October 22, 2015. Curtis Lecture Hall, L.
We have not come as far as you’d think. There is an ache that we carry when infringing upon white supremacist walls. The ache of oppression.
Like workers entering a factory, a flood of black faces make their way into the lecture hall wearing almost identical outfits: thick-rimmed glasses, combat boots, plaid, messy bun, septum piercing, peacoat, and a Starbucks cup in hand. So this is what feminism looks like.
Amid the selfies and increasing chatter, I look around the room and realize that in the entirety of my life, I have never been in a room with this many women and this many people of colour. Women and people of colour who have gathered together to learn and have a conversation with a black female professor, a scarcity at York.
As a brown face, and one of the few men in the crowd, who is sick and tired of the ocean of white that washes over me every time I leave home, I feel like I belong without having to try, and understood without having to explain. It’s a shame that it’s a rarity in 2015. If only this event wasn’t a one-time thing.
With a purple shawl hanging around her neck and her hair in small braids, bell hooks looks at the audience, the wrinkles on her forehead ascending, as her legion of fans run up to gush. There may not have been a red carpet, but this is royalty and as she took the mic off the stand, we were at her service.
Applause erupted in the house-full crowd even before a word was spoken. The clapping hands were like fluttering feathers in the wind while an infant wailed intermittently. So this what feminism sounds like.
We all had a flame inside us that was burning from our bellies, not of anger, but of repressed feelings of being slighted, unheard, and feeling lesser than in the face of, as hooks says, imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
“The fact is, when black people receive that greater attention from the dominant white society, it is usually negative,” said hooks.
She said that there has been no profound effort to destroy groups of racism and white supremacy.
“Instead, we live in a society that claims via our government and public policy to condemn racial discrimination, even as imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy shapes our politics and culture.”
We forget where we came from. We try to shed away our pasts in hope for a future like our parents did, thinking this was a better way of life. Years of pushing the boulder up the mountain only for it to fall back down, like the myth of Sisyphus.
You wear plaid, spray yourself with cologne before you leave the house to cover the smell of fried fish, and listen to Mumford & Sons, thinking that this is better. You conform and shed any ethnic culture of your own to not be seen as different or a threat to the white supremacist order. Have we pleased you, daddy?
You seem to forget that everything you see and hear is telling you that white supremacy is alive and well. That when you say your name at Starbucks and the barista doesn’t understand, white supremacy is telling you that you are different.
That the inability to find your name in the souvenir shop is white supremacy saying, “white makes money, not you.” That when you see Hanna Schygulla’s white hand run down a big black sweat-leaden belly in The Marriage of Maria Braun, you feel uncomfortable because you are not used to images of black love. Why is that?
When your father looks at you and says, “they will look at the colour of your skin,” he is talking about the walls outside of the home. The walls of the rest of the world. For him, its stability and safety that comes from white money. He does not deal with concerns of Lena Dunham-esque “figuring it out” and self-determination. This is a joke to him, a privileged one.
“Class privilege for black folks does not necessarily lead to better health,” said hooks.
Black women who are poor have the same health issues as black women who have wealth and privilege. We suffer all kinds of aggressions by our colleagues and are then discounted.
“Not only do race and ethnicity shape many of our life experiences, they are [also] powerful predictors of longevity,” she said.
Enter any black or brown house and you can guarantee that one of the kitchen cabinets is filled with tablets and pills and blood-glucose meters. Symptoms of middle-class malaise are back pain, diabetes, and high cholesterol. Bring on the hot water bag.
As a Sri-Lankan queer male, I am witness to the ingrained patriarchal control and domination in the home. Watching your mother and aunts in constant pain, broken backs, knees, and arms, trying to transgress class is a sad sight to see. It’s dealt with and projected onto your being and its possibilities.
In all the talk of physical abuse, we seem to forget the power of verbal and psychic abuse that slowly scrapes the insides and leaves us hollow.
“There was nothing sexy about him (12 year old Tamir Rice). Nothing could be said about that little boy other than that he was slaughtered by imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy,” said hooks.
“And you cannot make the slaughter of that child sexy or compelling. That’s not what people want to turn on their TVs and see,” she said. “We don’t talk about the post-traumatic stress of all of these events because it’s not cute, not sexy, and it doesn’t highlight white people in the way that highlighting on the white man that killed people in Charleston, and all the stuff that makes the media.”
Let’s face it, media is the number one tool of fascism in the United States.
Cameron Langrell, Rachel Bryk, Sam Taub, Blake Brockington, Leelah Alcorn, Taylor Alesana, and Kyler Prescott are just a few of the trans youth who committed suicide in 2015, and not sexy enough for your newsfeed.
The medium is the message and we are failing to decipher it.
“The focus is still on black male patriarchy, as though white men are not disturbed and fucked up,” hooks said.
“Patriarchy is the answer. Do you guys know about the young black woman professor who was starting a new job at Boston University, who said, ‘when are we going to realize that college educated white males are a problem?’ We are not even allowed as educated black women critical thinkers or to say anything about white boys. You know white folks can say whatever they want about black people and black males.”
“Despite all the killings by young white males, we can’t say white males are a problem. Despite all the sexual predation on college campuses by white males, we can’t say they are a problem. This is censorship,” added hooks.
They try to shut you up and self-censorship is where they succeed. Thinking critically, being aware, and feeling deep emotions beyond a text message is an anomaly these days. And it’s a lonely place to be.
hooks did offer a solution to combat the injustice and oppression. She said that the transformative power of love makes lasting change possible.
“Anger has its place but it will not bring an end to domination, to violence,” she said. “To choose love is counter-hegemonic and revolutionary. Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work to end domination.”
When hooks talks about how she hasn’t had a partner in a long time she gives an insightful revelation. “I always tell people my life is a pie, and that’s a slice of the pie that’s missing. But there’s all this other pie.”
I was wrong. There is no look or sound to feminism. Feminism is a feeling.
As you walk home alone, with a ringing in your ears and heightened awareness to the world around you, the flame that burned burned even more. It is itching to do something. You have the feeling, and all this other pie.
For whom does the bell toll? For thee.
We have not came as far as you’d think, but we’re on our way. It’s time. Shall we?
