Then vs Now
Fighting Erasure
Efforts to force collective amnesia are as old as conquest. The Roman decree damnatio memoriae — ‘‘condemnation of memory’’ — punished individuals by destroying every trace of them from the city, down to chiseling faces off statues. It was considered a fate worse than execution. But there are subtler, everyday forms of banishing people from public life.
In December, Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer, stood trial for sexually assaulting 12 black women and one teenager. He preyed on the vulnerable — the poor or drug-addicted or those with outstanding warrants — threatening them with arrest if they wouldn’t comply. Few people were following the case, however, until black women on social media began calling out the press for ignoring the story. Many reached for one word — ‘‘erasure’’ — for what they felt was happening.
‘‘Not covering the #Holtzclaw verdict is erasing black women’s lives from notice,’’ one woman tweeted. ‘‘ERASURE IS VIOLENCE.’’ Deborah Douglas, writing for Ebony magazine, argued that not reporting on the case ‘‘continues the erasure of black women from the national conversation on race, police brutality and the right to safety.’’
— ‘‘Erasure’’ refers to the practice of collective indifference that renders certain people and groups invisible —
The word migrated out of the academy, where it alluded to the tendency of ideologies to dismiss inconvenient facts, and is increasingly used to describe how inconvenient people are dismissed, their history, pain and achievements blotted out. Compared with words like ‘‘diversity’’ and ‘‘representation,’’ with their glib corporate gloss, ‘‘erasure’’ is a blunt word for a blunt process. It goes beyond simplistic discussions of quotas to ask: Whose stories are taught and told? Whose suffering is recognized? Whose dead are mourned?
The casualties of ‘‘erasure’’ constitute familiar castes: women, minorities, the queer and the poor. In some cases, the process is so routine that it has a name; the suppression of women’s contributions to science, for example, is known as ‘‘the Matilda effect,’’ named for the 19th-century women’s-rights activist Matilda Joslyn Gage. It refers to how female scientists have been left out of textbooks, and seen their research appropriated and their deserved Nobel Prizes given to male colleagues and supervisors.
But there has been resistance from these overlooked quarters, too. As with the Holtzclaw case, black female journalists and activists have been spotlighting how crimes against black women are met by silence and seeming unconcern — like the 19 transgender women of color murdered in 2015. The #SayHerName movement draws attention to black women believed to be victims of police brutality, like Alexia Christian and Meagan Hockaday, whose deaths received a small fraction of the attention given to Eric Garner or Michael Brown. In December, a group of activists organized a die-in at the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington State to protest that only five out of 107 participating artists in an exhibition called ‘‘Art AIDS America’’ were black. They publicized the event online with the hashtag #StopErasingBlackPeople and released a statement saying the exhibition ‘‘paints H.I.V. as an issue faced predominantly by white gay men, when in fact the most at-risk group are currently black trans women.’’
These internecine skirmishes can turn petty, but they also reveal that we’re part of ever-shifting power relationships. Our identities and our privileges are not static but deeply contextual.
— We who are silenced may yet silence others —
This awareness is central to the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop musical, ‘‘Hamilton.’’ In a play that’s so self-consciously an act of historical restoration, with its cast of mostly black and Hispanic actors playing America’s founding fathers, there is a twist. While burning letters from Alexander Hamilton, his wife, about whom little is known, sings, ‘‘I’m erasing myself from the narrative/Let future historians wonder/How Eliza reacted when you broke her heart.’’ It’s an acknowledgment of the stories this play cannot fully restore, and of a group — women — who are still left out of history.
BLM's #WhatMatters2020
Seven years ago, what is now known as the Black Lives Matter Global Network began to organize. It started out as a Black–centered political will and movement building project turned chapter–based, member–led organization whose mission is to build local power and it intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
In the years since, they've committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti–Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic, and political power to thrive.
They are expansive. The are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. They also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, they must move beyond the narrative nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. They must ensure they are building a movement that brings everyone to the front.
— They are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise —
Essay: Cultural Extermination and the Erasure of Blackness
By Danielle Moodie-Mills
July 27, 2015
Nona Faustine, Over My Dead Body (2013)
"You hate me don't you?"
This question posed by Kendrick Lamar over a cacophonous beat on his song, “The Blacker the Berry,” was a direct response to his lyrical rundown of the anti-blackness African Americans have faced under white supremacy. He goes on, "you want to exterminate us," which, he rhymes, could be the only desire of a system that has worked tirelessly to maintain our subordination.
Lamar's poetic dissertation on this song (from his album “To Pimp a Butterfly”) is so brash and unapologetic it makes me both incredibly uncomfortable while simultaneously filled with black pride by his truth slaying. The truth isn't meant to comfort us--it's meant to move us towards action.
What Kendrick Lamar did lyrically over tight beats, artist Nona Faustine does visually with her photographic series "White Shoes".
— "White Shoes" takes us through a historical pilgrimage through a New York City many would like to keep buried. Faustine travels to former slave trading posts and strips down, bearing not only her body but her soul as she forces us to examine the sites that millions so casually walk by oblivious to the torture, humiliation, and dehumanization that occurred at the hands of former Titans of industry and "masters of the universe" —
The imagery of her standing naked on the steps of City Hall and on Wall Street with the past juxtaposed against the present, where we like to believe we've evolved from such savage treatment of other humans—and yet not too far from these locations black bodies lay dead in the streets, shot to death, strangled of life because of the perceived threat of their very existence.
— "White Shoes" awakens an unconscious society to
the reality that black bodies are of no worth, no value except for how they can be used for the perpetuation of white dominance. It prevails with each black body snatched from society by white fear—a reminder much like the auction block that we don't belong.
We are ornamental, removable —
When I spoke with Nona she spoke of the consciousness-raising aspect of her work:
“Americans need to recognize who these people were that participated in the industry of slavery. You have an entire industry right now that is trying to eradicate this country’s connection to slavery—we need to have an open conversation. I hope that NYC puts up plaques, has interactive maps, so we can walk this history. Other cities have this—history trails, slavery trails—in NYC there was such a deep shame in the city’s involvement in the slave industry that they haven’t wanted to recognize it. There was a deliberate effort to hide this history.”
Her point is a vital one. If we refuse to critically examine our history we will be destined to repeat it. Right now we have school districts like Texas that have literally rewritten the history books to undersell the brutal practice of slavery.
Chris Rock once lamented that true progress will happen when black people are essentially allowed to be average—or to just be themselves. To me, progress will have arrived when our bodies, our lives aren't othered. When we can look at our dark history and own it and make good on the promise of justice and liberty for all. When the skill and fortitude of African American athletes like Serena Williams can be acknowledged for more than "animalistic prowess", but instead for strategic thinking.
"Slavery is a topic in America we really try hard not to discuss." - Nona Faustine http://bit.ly/1wzr7hX #dodgeburn
Nona Faustine, Over My Dead Body (2013)
When cartoons aren't created to compare the First Lady of the U.S. to an ape or a savage. When white women aren't celebrated for appropriating the style and bodies that black women like Saartji Baartman have been literally placed on display for. When measures of blackness stop being beautiful, or edgy only when it’s wrapped in whiteness.
As you view Faustine art work you can’t help but think about how black women have been robbed of their femininity and purity at the hands of white supremacy. This fact is not lost on the artist, she said this:
“When you think about Delia and Baartman (two female slaves whose bodies were put on display as sideshows) it puts the black body in a canyon. You see how those bodies were critiqued and placed on display on because they were outside of western ideals of beauty. Then you have us now in 2015 and listen to the characterizations of Serena’s body to those of animals, FLOTUS being compared to an ape, their bodies picked apart. Then I think about me as a black woman and how I’m perceived— a way to dismiss black women and the validity of our existence. Photography was used in the 19th century to formulate these ideas,
these stereotypes of blackness. Think about this, the first images of black people are of enslaved people and they were taken to show that we were not human— to discredit our humanity. This is where mug shots came from. Side, front and back.”
Of My Body I will Make Monuments in Your Honor (2014) by Nona Faustine
As Faustine stands in her white shoes unable to escape white patriarchy standing boldly almost defiantly—owning her body in a space where our ancestors were sold, she stands now in tribute to their sacrifice but also as a reminder that loving and owning our blackness remains a revolutionary act—necessary because we are still at war with the manifest destiny of white supremacy.
For the African-American photographer Nona Faustine, many of the lost histories of this city still have powerful personal resonance. In the background work for her most recent photographic project, she meticulously tracked the history of slavery in the five boroughs, uncovering the locations of ancient slave burial grounds, slave markets, slave owning farms, and the landing spots of slave ships, going back even before the Revolutionary War. She then visited these places in their current form, and made self portraits at the various locations, collapsing time in a sense, or at least connecting her current life back to the lingering ghosts of the past.
Faustine’s images aren’t simply a before and after look at architecture and social change – their purpose is not to show us a bodega where once a church stood. Her pictures are much more of a search for identity, an attempt to both viscerally remember the past and to come to grips with its influence on her present. At each of these places, she stands naked, except for a pair of white pumps, her ample curves exposed for all to see, often in the obvious cold. Her performative stances bring together a complex mix of emotions and realities, both past and present, where extreme vulnerability (especially as a woman) and a sense of being stripped and devalued are blended with resistance and defiance, of standing up to forces (as embodied by her constraining white shoes) that would push her down. The best of these pictures richly reverberate with all of these layered feelings, making them much more nuanced than just a nude woman standing on the courthouse steps.
…Whether she carries a pair of iron shackles or pushes on the immensity of a marble column (both at the Tweed Court House, which sits on an African American burial ground), Faustine is silently grappling with bygone foes and poignantly trying to make sense of those struggles.
Again and again, the residue of history rises up to meet the present, and Faustine is left trying to reconcile two conflicting views of who she is.
Full Article
By Noni Limar
Artists are vital to the Black Liberation Movement. Art demands that we see ourselves in our fullness, as we really are. During an era in which we are experiencing an oppressive regime and strategic rebellion, this reflection are necessary. We need artists who can illuminate where we are currently as a culture while reimagining our collective future. The movement needs artists who are awake, committed, and united.
As we know, the assassination of Malcom X in 1965 inspired a more radical engagement in the fight for Black liberation. What is often forgotten is the key role and lasting impact the Black Arts Movement played at the time.
The Black Arts Movement was a political group of artists creating work that spoke directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America from 1965 to 1975. The Black Arts Movement set out to serve the spiritual and cultural needs of Black people through a newly defined Black aesthetic. We take for granted the roles our predecessors played in reevaluating the Western artistic aesthetic and centering Blackness. Within a fiercely divided Black and White America, they created a Black American identity.
Black Lives Matter Arts + Culture has found great inspiration in the work of the Black Arts Movement. Although we recognize many of the artists held problematic beliefs, we value the collective body of work they left for us to inherit. The writers, dancers, painters, dramatics, and musicians of the Black Arts Movement shifted the way we though about ourselves, impacting the culture for generations. We know that lasting change occurs when we change hearts and minds.
About Noni: Noni Limar is a content creator, cultural worker, and love storyteller living in Southern California.
More information can be found via Black Lives Matter, Celebrating Four Years of Organizing To Protect Black Lives PDF
those in power are failing us
… at this historic moment, we demand BETTER. From the covid pandemic and police brutality to the marginalization of minority communities around the world,
— leadership is broken —
Lacking sensitivity to the real lives of their people, leaders are gambling with public health, safety, community cohesion and the future of younger generations.
Divisive and poor at crisis management, they sometimes appear more interested in serving themselves over the people they were elected to serve.
— We have to make them raise their game —
Ava DuVernay's 13th
Reframes American History
By Juleyka Lantigua–Williams
October 6, 2016
Ava DuVernay’s 13th is a documentary about how the Thirteenth Amendment led to mass incarceration in the United States, but it’s also a gorgeous, evocative, and maddening exploration of words: of their power, their roots, their permanence. It’s about those who wield those words and those made to kneel by them. Many Americans by now are familiar with the coded language of the country’s racial hegemony. Some shun certain words while others make anthems out of them.
The film opens with an analysis of the eponymous amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” 13th then spends over an hour and a half tracing the path from the clause between those two commas to the
2.2 million prisoners in the American justice system.
PULL QUOTES::
1 out of 4 human beings with their hands on bars, shackled, in the world are locked up here, in the land of the free.
We had a prison population of 300,000 in 1972. Today, we have a prison population of 2.3 million. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.
13th Amendment of the constitution makes it unconstitutional for someone to be held as a slave. In other words, it grants freedom to all Americans. There are exceptions, including criminals.
When we think about slavery, it was an economic system. And the demise of slavery at the end of the Civil War left the Southern economy in tatters.
There are 4 million people who were formerly property, and they were formerly the integral part of the economic production system in the South. And now these people are free.
The 13th Amendment loophole was immediately exploited. After the Civil War, African Americans were arrested en masse. It was the nation's first prison boom. African Americans were arrested for extremely minor crimes, like loitering or vagrancy. This brought a rapid transition of to a kind of mythology of black criminality.
They would say that the Negro was out of control, that there's a threat to white women. The same sort of image that we had of Uncle Remus and these genial, kind of, black figures was replaced by this rapacious menacing, Negro male evil that had to be banished.
Laws were passed to that relegated African Americans to a permanent second–class status.
Civil Rights activists began to see the necessity of building not just a Civil Rights Movement, but a human rights movement.
— Justice too long delayed, is justice denied —
Contributions & Resources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/magazine/the-painful-consequences-of-erasure.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/cultural-extermination-erasure-blackness-n395526
http://nonafaustine.virb.com/press
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0pJEXffvS0uOHdJREJnZ2JJYTA/view
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/10/ava-duvernay-13th-netflix/503075/