It’s been a while since I reached into the world of what there is going on. I’m conscious of how much time and energy is taken up being gaslighted by political shenanigans to the detriment of self. Yesterday was an overload of witnessing racism and ableism, perhaps made worse as it was holocaust memorial day. I’d intended to write about it but was too exhausted. I tweeted about it. It was exhausting and made me feel sick. I’m reminded of how racism is a distraction from work but when you’ve been left without work you have a deep connection to it’s hard to find where the meaningful work is.
Daily it (work) stares me in the face but try as I might I’m not sheltered from it. Stories that are heartbreaking where I know intervention would help but have been dismissed and silenced, put by others into the “too hard” box or the “not enough money box”. I wonder how much is in the “too angry” box or maybe just hidden in the “not enough time” box. “Outside our remit” box.
Anyway, like many here I am making the best of a bad job. Not learning anything from my not so distant past I followed a trail to take me here. I wonder at this point if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew in terms of trying to fit too much in. Next after this is Professor Andrews at six.
Just as it was getting increasingly interesting I had to leave for the school run. I wonder if it’s this not quite getting there that adds to my general levels of irritation and frustration. I can’t think it’s neutral in effect.
As I
Phone. A long awaited breakthrough with my cousin. She sounds happy, IT’S AMAZING WHAT A BIT OF COMPANY DOES. I feel so proud of her! Congratulate her on what she’s done. I worry that I might sound condescending, check myself. That line between coercion and direction was difficult this week. I felt on unsure ground. Told her home truths. It was difficult, I wondered about my place. As I do now from a slightly different perspective listening to Daniel and AndrE (how do you find that e with an accent over the top)s on their research about home and place attachment from the perspective of sustainability science.
They talk about new possibilities, how awareness brings challenges. Ask how do we centre or as they say anchor our sense of wellbeing during global flux. A flux that destabilises.
I’m conscious of how I might have missed a bit, they talk about weather, climate and death of predictability; how that isn’t the case. They talk about being fixed rooted, and I think of a piece of seaweed rooted to the seabed, waving in seas, going back and forth. They talk of stars and as semblance theory, like a constellation of stars.
A passing thought about the type of Nursing I’d envisioned but that was cast off out of hand. My thoughts are drawn back to today. Knowing that I could have helped but being locked out. Anyway back to the webinar, time is short, soon it’ll be Professor Andrews.
I’m unfamiliar with Robert Sax.
The fleeting, drift, flow talk reminds me of the kayakers I saw today, how in my blog I’m conscious of that tension drawing attention to this place but also the damage caused with increasing gentrification. I feel a sense of shame as they highlight how gentrification is facilitated but also that tension of living in a seaside town with a history of tourism. Is that the place ballet that Daniel speaks of?
I think about Jaywick and how Jaywick sands was the playground of people with holiday homes and wonder about the people living there all the year round in the past. Yet a proud village so not perhaps so very different from now. Not what the media might have you believe.
I return to my notes in those last minutes before tuning in to Professor Kehinde Andrews. How to protect this landscape when we are interdependent yet powerless in the face of global forces? They talk as if urbanisation is a good thing and I wonder what I’m missing. I don’t aspire urban only perhaps in the translocality that virtual affords. A different world. A world that removes our young? A place to dip in and out of but not reside in for those who can or want to get outside?
I’ve been consumed by on line. It has eaten me and spat me out. I’m respacialising my life.
I haven’t read any of Professor Andrews books, I come into the virtual space feeling naive though I have got a book about Empire that I’ve dipped into before and lays mostly unread by my bed, books by women taking over my space.
Professor Andrews talks about radical Blackness and I wonder what I’ve signed up to, wonder if this space is for me. I feel like an intruder and both want to speak but remain silent, aware of the need for space.
He starts by saying Blackness is different from race.
Race is about white supremacy. We imagine a map of GDP, notice how rich is where white people live both home and abroad. As he says this I think about the people I met when volunteering here (see what is suggested for here https://www.homeless.org.uk/sites/default/files/Homeless%20Link%20Non-UK%20nationals%20briefing_final2.pdf ). Coming back to this now I think of transport links and access to the supermarket, fresh food. There used to be one on the Broadway as I recall.
Back to thinking about globally and then to the person we met as we waited to get into a car at Agra train station. Wondering about access to health care, Husband and wife in a wheelbarrow begging for money. (https://www.leprosymission.org.uk/about/working-partnership/ ). Returning to this now I’m reminded of was it my Grandfather or his, I’m lost in time, who brought the dead body of their child back here from London. Walking all the way, with their dead child in a wheelbarrow to bring them home.
Professor Andrews brings up what we know about covid. How so many people were surprised at the exposed inequalities yet glaringly obvious to some. Hierarchical systems that devalues Black lives, shaped by race. (here’s a link to some of his work https://www.wob.com/en-gb/category/all?search=Kehinde%20Andrews ) how race is about the exploitation of Black bodies.
He discussed the privilege of the West, the wealth gap, class, access to services. Geography is racialised. We think about the natural resources, the commodification of gold/silver/tobacco/sugar.
I’m reminded of an article I read, how even now towns that benefitted from factories for sugar are more affluent and have higher employment than elsewhere. We listened to uncomfortable facts, how the enslaved were treated, the mass genocide in the America’s, 65-70 Million people, the hidden violence inside and out! The resistance to abuse.
How before the 17th century Europe was so far behind until the depopulation of working age people from Africa of whom 40% may have died on the way to the coast. How the whole economy of Africa was changed due to slavery. The Black body was wanted but the Black mind not so much and it makes me think of those minds today. The creativity and ingenuity.
I learn about Blackness and phenotypes.
“We’re all in the same boat”, “Africa is part of who I am”, “It’s about knowing who you are”. So I learnt that in theoretical speak Blackness is about connection to Africa, (our common ancestry as humans). The term has been abused in a heteropatriarchal sense. Blackness is about that connection across all lines gender/sexuality. It’s about unitedness and connection. To layer in difference goes against the concept Professor Andrews tells us; but is widely misunderstood by academics. It’s about coming together.
I read a comment on twitter, someone invited on to a news station disapproved of and I wonder why we continue to make the same mistakes not listening to voices that have been othered. The very thing that arguably led to Brexit. Playing into the colonial practice of division.
We’re reminded of how corruption and infighting are a global impact of racism. Wonder how that might be different. Imagine what else there can be? Constellations of support as opposed to extraction? Working on the good for everyone.
Historical resistance came in the form of decreased birthrate in Africa once people realised they were being bred for enslavement we were told.
I’m interrupted in my thoughts and writing, have I seen the tiktok video I’ve been sent. I’m aware of the time and think I’ll come back to this, check the video as asked and it’s of a table top food waste composter! Time’s change. I find it kind of cool that my child is into these things, regional difference? I’ll come back to this.
Dr Muna Abdi reminds us on Twitter that this work is hard because of our embodied response. When I was writing yesterday (I’m coming back to this after a good night’s sleep). My intestines felt expanded and bloated. The skirt that I’ve worn for years was tight on my waist and I discreetly undid it as I listened to Professor Kehinde Andrews.
I’m reading bell hooks. “The argument that black women were matriarch’s was readily accepted by black people even though it was an image created by white males”.
“Black slaves who accepted their master’s picture of freedom were afraid to break the bonds of slavery. A similar tactic has been used to brainwash black women. White colonisers encourage black women, who are economically oppressed and victimised by sexism and racism, to believe that they are matriarch’s, that they exercise some social and political control over their lives.”
It’s a myth I want this “parasitic dependence” that conveniently suits the patriarchy.