It should never be the oppressed who must manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness.

flickr/Gigi Ibrahim

T he well-known South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was created to help form a unified society out of the ashes of racist division. Moving from a society carved out by legalized bigotry called apartheid to one made whole by equality was a mammoth task no one could achieve perfectly. Despite the violence done to people of color, particularly black Africans, the TRC called for “a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation.”

To obtain closure, victims and victims’ families could confront the agents of violence who had acted out of political motivations (from both the apartheid and anti-apartheid sides). The TRC aimed to provide amnesty for such people, if they gave satisfactory testimony: There was a fear that people would never find out the fate of loved ones or the identity of transgressors if amnesty was not offered. Instead of answers, there would be only silence. Amnesty would allow truth to blossom, and, as many know, silence is not conducive to stability, because when things are unsaid it also means they’re not resolved.

Whether the TRC was a success is its own discussion. But for all its faults, it recognized that it should never be the oppressed who are forced to manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness. It wasn’t the victims attempting to convey to their oppressors why they had done wrong. The wrongdoers themselves — out of fear, shame, desperation, or whatever — were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see. However bloody that altar became, we did not expect the victims to maintain it.

The wrongdoers themselves were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see.

This lesson doesn’t appear universal.

A few months back, in the United States, Frederick Sorrell was “charged with … intimidation after following a black Muslim couple in his car while hurling threats through the window.” He did this for twenty blocks, yelling racist threats and making violent gestures.

He pleaded guilty, and after being sentenced, Sorrell wept, claiming “I guess my ignorance and my stupidity is why I opened my mouth, and I shouldn’t have and I claim full responsibility.”

If he had stopped there, that would be dodgy enough: He doesn’t actually acknowledge he did anything wrong, only that he “shouldn’t have” acted the way he did. Does that mean he shouldn’t have acted then and there? Or that he should’ve waited for a better time when he would not have been caught? He claims responsibility for his actions but doesn’t tie his actions to being wrong. (In case you’re wondering, that’s how you make a proper apology.)

But he continued, saying “I would love to sit down and have an open conversation with [the couple he targeted] and have an open mind and apologize.” If Sorrell had his way, his victims would give up time, to sit with him and have an “open conversation.” They would gain nothing, while he would get a free education and good PR. They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.

Too often, people from various spectrums of privilege who might say or do something offensive to a marginalized group put out a call to be “educated.” Men who do or say something sexist call for women to “educate” them; white folk want to hear from black people why they can’t say the N-word; and so on. Like Sorrell, people like this are asking those already targeted by the status quo to do the emotional labor to educate them.

Consider men and our alleged ignorance about feminist issues. As Lindy West noted in her New York Times column, a lot of men claimed ignorance when confronted with various issues raised by #MeToo, such as affirmative consent and gendered socialization. But, especially in the digital information age, this can longer be an excuse. “The reason [nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization] feel foreign to so many men is that so many men never felt like they needed to listen,” she wrote. “Rape is a women’s issue, right? Men don’t major in women’s studies.”

They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.

These discussions didn’t emerge when women finally had Twitter accounts. Feminists do and have written on these various subjects for decades, so they’ve already carefully researched and argued the very points men continue to feign ignorance about. If you can work out how to operate a computer, you can find books and blogs and articles written by feminists on feminist topics you are ignorant about. Books exists, podcasts exists, blogs exist. You can even give money to such wonderful publications that aim to educate on feminists matters.

This applies to issues of race, disability, and so forth. Ignorance is only seriously condemnable if you do nothing to alleviate it once it’s pointed out. And it’s easy and lazy to respond by wanting those who’ve called you out on your ignorance to solve it for you.

The flipside of laziness is the condescending insult of assuming this education is what you are owed. Consider Sorrell again: How entitled must you be to think that the people who you targeted with horrific, racist bile should then sit down with a cup of tea and become benevolent educators? That they should be the ones to forgive what you haven’t apologized for? While ignorance might explain part of racism, it doesn’t explain aggression, targeting, and threats. Sorrell didn’t unintentionally make a rude remark in a public space this couple overheard: He followed them for a mile for the grave crime of walking in public while Muslim.

There Is No Middle Ground Between Racism And Justice

It is not the job of the oppressed to sit with those who think that, to one degree or another, they are less than people. It’s a nice, cozy ideal to expect the oppressors to be “better,” to go “high,” when everything is dragging you low. This is why it’s doubly insulting when alleged allies call on oppressed groups to not be “too hasty” or “dismissive,” to have a “dialogue” — as if we’re disagreeing about the best Marvel movie, not our personhood. If you think there’s “both sides,” rather than recognizing one side is bigoted and the other a target of bigotry, I’m not sure you’re the ally you think you are. If you want a calm response to bigotry, and you are not part of that targeted group, feel free to enter the fray. Indeed, as men, it is on us to call out other men’s sexism; it is our job as straight people to call out homophobia; it is our job as cis people to call out transphobia.

But we ought not to entertain these opinions as mere political views arising out of ignorance: They harm. To paraphrase Dr. King, sometimes the biggest obstacles are not the screaming bigots but the moderates who, even if they’re not the ones planting the seeds of hate, are flattening the soil with their shovels of civility.

The oppressed are not lost for words: books, articles, speeches all exist and those with bigoted views are welcome to them and, better, moderates are welcome to direct their bigoted friends to these words. We’ve spoken them already. We’ve in fact already done the work. It’s time to stop expecting oppressed groups to, with some preternatural calmness and civility, simply smile and calmly discuss a bigot’s bigotry, to their face, until it unravels and he reaches Enlightenment.

It’s not our job to yank them out the dark well they wallow in. They put themselves there and many ladders have already been stitched together. It’s their job to grab a rung and pull themselves out.

Looking For A Comments Section? We Don’t Have One.

]]> https://theestablishment.co/it-is-not-the-job-of-the-oppressed-to-sit-with-our-oppressors-a2915d54d2be/ Wed, 25 Apr 2018 15:37:51 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=1828 Read more]]> It should never be the oppressed who must manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness.

The well-known South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was created to help form a unified society out of the ashes of racist division. Moving from a society carved out by legalized bigotry called apartheid to one made whole by equality was a mammoth task no one could achieve perfectly. Despite the violence done to people of color, particularly black Africans, the TRC called for “a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation.”

To obtain closure, victims and victims’ families could confront the agents of violence who had acted out of political motivations (from both the apartheid and anti-apartheid sides). The TRC aimed to provide amnesty for such people, if they gave satisfactory testimony: There was a fear that people would never find out the fate of loved ones or the identity of transgressors if amnesty was not offered. Instead of answers, there would be only silence. Amnesty would allow truth to blossom, and, as many know, silence is not conducive to stability, because when things are unsaid it also means they’re not resolved.

Whether the TRC was a success is its own discussion. But for all its faults, it recognized that it should never be the oppressed who are forced to manage the pain of an oppressor realizing his wrongfulness. It wasn’t the victims attempting to convey to their oppressors why they had done wrong. The wrongdoers themselves — out of fear, shame, desperation, or whatever — were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see. However bloody that altar became, we did not expect the victims to maintain it.

The wrongdoers themselves were the ones coming forward, carrying a knowledge of wrongfulness to the altar of amnesty for all to see.
Click To Tweet

This lesson doesn’t appear universal.

A few months back, in the United States, Frederick Sorrell was “charged with … intimidation after following a black Muslim couple in his car while hurling threats through the window.” He did this for twenty blocks, yelling racist threats and making violent gestures.

He pleaded guilty, and after being sentenced, Sorrell wept, claiming “I guess my ignorance and my stupidity is why I opened my mouth, and I shouldn’t have and I claim full responsibility.”

If he had stopped there, that would be dodgy enough: He doesn’t actually acknowledge he did anything wrong, only that he “shouldn’t have” acted the way he did. Does that mean he shouldn’t have acted then and there? Or that he should’ve waited for a better time when he would not have been caught? He claims responsibility for his actions but doesn’t tie his actions to being wrong. (In case you’re wondering, that’s how you make a proper apology.)

But he continued, saying “I would love to sit down and have an open conversation with [the couple he targeted] and have an open mind and apologize.” If Sorrell had his way, his victims would give up time, to sit with him and have an “open conversation.” They would gain nothing, while he would get a free education and good PR. They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.

Too often, people from various spectrums of privilege who might say or do something offensive to a marginalized group put out a call to be “educated.” Men who do or say something sexist call for women to “educate” them; white folk want to hear from black people why they can’t say the N-word; and so on. Like Sorrell, people like this are asking those already targeted by the status quo to do the emotional labor to educate them.

Consider men and our alleged ignorance about feminist issues. As Lindy West noted in her New York Times column, a lot of men claimed ignorance when confronted with various issues raised by #MeToo, such as affirmative consent and gendered socialization. But, especially in the digital information age, this can longer be an excuse. “The reason [nuanced conversations about consent and gendered socialization] feel foreign to so many men is that so many men never felt like they needed to listen,” she wrote. “Rape is a women’s issue, right? Men don’t major in women’s studies.”

They would sit in a room with a man who conveyed pure hatred and violence toward them, all for the gamble that their aggressor might emerge a better person.
Click To Tweet

These discussions didn’t emerge when women finally had Twitter accounts. Feminists do and have written on these various subjects for decades, so they’ve already carefully researched and argued the very points men continue to feign ignorance about. If you can work out how to operate a computer, you can find books and blogs and articles written by feminists on feminist topics you are ignorant about. Books exists, podcasts exists, blogs exist. You can even give money to such wonderful publications that aim to educate on feminists matters.

This applies to issues of race, disability, and so forth. Ignorance is only seriously condemnable if you do nothing to alleviate it once it’s pointed out. And it’s easy and lazy to respond by wanting those who’ve called you out on your ignorance to solve it for you.

The flipside of laziness is the condescending insult of assuming this education is what you are owed. Consider Sorrell again: How entitled must you be to think that the people who you targeted with horrific, racist bile should then sit down with a cup of tea and become benevolent educators? That they should be the ones to forgive what you haven’t apologized for? While ignorance might explain part of racism, it doesn’t explain aggression, targeting, and threats. Sorrell didn’t unintentionally make a rude remark in a public space this couple overheard: He followed them for a mile for the grave crime of walking in public while Muslim.

There Is No Middle Ground Between Racism And Justice
theestablishment.co

It is not the job of the oppressed to sit with those who think that, to one degree or another, they are less than people. It’s a nice, cozy ideal to expect the oppressors to be “better,” to go “high,” when everything is dragging you low. This is why it’s doubly insulting when alleged allies call on oppressed groups to not be “too hasty” or “dismissive,” to have a “dialogue” — as if we’re disagreeing about the best Marvel movie, not our personhood. If you think there’s “both sides,” rather than recognizing one side is bigoted and the other a target of bigotry, I’m not sure you’re the ally you think you are. If you want a calm response to bigotry, and you are not part of that targeted group, feel free to enter the fray. Indeed, as men, it is on us to call out other men’s sexism; it is our job as straight people to call out homophobia; it is our job as cis people to call out transphobia.

But we ought not to entertain these opinions as mere political views arising out of ignorance: They harm. To paraphrase Dr. King, sometimes the biggest obstacles are not the screaming bigots but the moderates who, even if they’re not the ones planting the seeds of hate, are flattening the soil with their shovels of civility.

The oppressed are not lost for words: books, articles, speeches all exist and those with bigoted views are welcome to them and, better, moderates are welcome to direct their bigoted friends to these words. We’ve spoken them already. We’ve in fact already done the work. It’s time to stop expecting oppressed groups to, with some preternatural calmness and civility, simply smile and calmly discuss a bigot’s bigotry, to their face, until it unravels and he reaches Enlightenment.

It’s not our job to yank them out the dark well they wallow in. They put themselves there and many ladders have already been stitched together. It’s their job to grab a rung and pull themselves out.

Erik Killmonger (Credit: YouTube)

Here there be spoilers.

When I went to see Black Panther, I didn’t think it would make me sad. I didn’t think I’d dislike Wakanda for its imaginary role in the real-world continued oppression of Black people.

I should be able to divorce reality from fiction, and yet, the narrative hit so close to home that I found myself weighted by it, almost to the point of tears. Knowing the horrors my ancestors survived as part of the slave trade, which Wakandans in this fictional universe could’ve fought to end, horrors that led to my existence — I’d gladly never live if it meant none of that ever happened.

I didn’t expect to walk away imagining a world where the transatlantic slave trade never happened, and resenting the fuck out of Wakanda because it did.

I didn’t expect to mourn Erik Killmonger, the villain who wasn’t MY villain. He was my hero. He was the me I wish I could be — the brutal, ruthless freedom fighter who built himself from nothing to free Black people from the colonizers. He was the hero I needed, not Black Panther, inert instead of dedicated to change, and that was a realization I was not expecting.

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I didn’t expect to mourn Erik Killmonger, the villain who wasn’t MY villain. He was my hero.
Click To Tweet

---

After the movie, I left the theater to the chants of “Wakanda Forever,” feeling unsettled and displaced. If Wakanda were a real place, I’d be Erik; I’d be the American monster in Wakanda because I couldn’t love a country with the means to end the transatlantic slave trade that instead chose to hide and pretend it wasn’t their problem. A nation that only fights when absolutely necessary and did not think the kidnapping, torture, murder, rape, abuse, dehumanization, and destruction of millions of people made war absolutely necessary. A nation with superior education, technology, creativity, and the financial ability to help that instead turned its collective back on those who lived outside its borders. Black people, like them. Because they were not Wakandan.

I came out of the theater angry at Wakanda.

I know it’s not a real place. I KNOW it’s not real. It’s a flawed fantasy that doesn’t align with the reality of the history of my family, my people. Still, to watch a narrative where the person with the power to change the world opts to murder his brother and desert his nephew to the poverty and oppression faced by so many Black people, all to maintain a separatist, non-interference policy, while spying and learning the atrocities endured by millions and doing nothing to stop it?

That’s a hard pill to swallow.

And to watch a narrative where the supposed villain is a man who learned the savagery of his oppressors and became a better monster than them, completely willing to sacrifice everything to change the fate of millions, while Wakanda watched and claimed that letting Black people suffer was the greater good?

How could I see this as the actions of a villain at all?

I understood Nakia, the Wakandan warrior who knew her nation wasn’t doing enough, which was why she could not, should not stay. Wakanda was complicit in the genocide of millions while looking at those suffering not with compassion, but with dismissal. Wakanda Forever really meant Wakanda First and Only. It meant pretending that ignoring genocide can exempt you from the responsibility to stop it. It meant upholding traditions that work inside a bubble, while sacrificing everyone outside of it.

I watched the judgement and disdain Wakandans had for Erik, a man who was ruthless because he had to be and merciless because to take power, mercy has no place — as demonstrated by T’Chaka taking the life of his own brother — and I thought, He is not who you should fight.

Is ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ A Subversive Takedown Of White Supremacy?

I could not love Wakanda. And, after learning more of its history, neither could T’Challa.

For if Wakanda was the marvel it is written to be, how could it have let the transatlantic slave trade happen? How could it have allowed the magnitude of suffering that continued in the many years after?

And so I was left with a bitterness I didn’t expect, and a sadness, as I wished for a past that can never happen. I was left knowing that in my heart, I am Erik Killmonger — that I, too, would want to force Wakanda to take a stand to help more than themselves.

Watching Black Panther, I had to accept that I would be an American monster in Wakanda. And like Erik, I’d want to burn it all down if that meant improving the world for Black people.

Originally published at talynnkel.com.

More than seven years ago, John T. Williams, a Native woodcarver, was killed — some would say murdered — by Seattle Police. The police killing was met with great protest by the Native community and allies, ultimately helping to spur a Department of Justice investigation that resulted in the Seattle Police Department being put under consent decree for excessive use of force and possibly racially disparate policing.

Earlier this year, when a photo was published on Facebook in remembrance of Williams with the hashtag #NativeLivesMatter, an online debate ensued. Native people, some commenters argued, are co-opting “Black Lives Matter” by saying “Native Lives Matter.”

Co-optation is — it should go without saying — a very real and serious issue. But in this case, I think we are missing the point. “Native Lives Matter” is not co-optation; it’s a necessary reflection of solidarity. In fact, I’d argue that it’s imperative for Black and Native peoples to see how our past, present, and future are inextricably tied together, especially in light of the most recent police killing of 14-year-old Jason Pero.

It’s not something Americans like to talk about, but the inception of the U.S. was largely incumbent upon two forces — the genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement of Black peoples from Africa.

The United States was built upon genocide, stolen land, and stolen peoples — and this difficult, unconfronted truth continues to inflict harm on both Native and Black peoples today, through state-sanctioned violence, police terrorism, and mass incarceration.

So why do we not always see our fight against white supremacy as a shared one? In part, this has been by design. Early slave states were dependent on separating and building animosity between Black peoples and indigenous peoples because our shared resistance was so strong. For example, Seminole Tribes and many black peoples of African descent lived in close relationship with each other in Spanish Florida, where slavery had been abolished in 1693. As a result, many escaped slaves retreated to the area and became known as Black Seminoles. Throughout the first Seminole War, Black and Native Seminoles fought together, but as Indian Removal continued and the southern slave states colonized more land, a divide would be brought between Black and Native peoples. This divide would ultimately weaken our resistance — forcing the relocation of most Seminole tribes and the fleeing of Black peoples to free states and nations.

But if we want to progress forward today, we must start from a place of shared resistance.

As a black mixed person living in the United States, I have come to understand that my civil rights are linked to the sovereignty and struggles of Native nations.

For many Native peoples, sovereignty is the ability to manage one’s own affairs and determine one’s own destiny; to live unencumbered by the power or influence of another when determining their fate. Yet this has not been the relationship between the United States and Native peoples. The U.S. defines Native sovereignty within the construct of “tribal sovereignty,” labeling Native peoples as “domestic dependent nations” existing within the borders of the U.S. as “wards of the State” — a fundamentally incongruous approach, as one cannot be both “sovereign” and “ward.” Even the word “tribe” is legally contrived and intentionally used by the U.S. as a replacement word for “nation,” though the words do not carry the same weight. This is an age-old form of state-sanctioned violence which aims to dehumanize Native peoples through words and legal constructs.

Black Folks, does this sound familiar? Slavery was a legal construct with dire physical and generational consequences which still persist today. The Emancipation Proclamation is a legal construct which made those who were inherently free legally free in word. U.S. law has repeatedly been used to infringe upon the basic human rights of Native and Black peoples to be free. Even those laws and legal constructs meant to enshrine the rights of Black and Native peoples have failed to acknowledge the inherency of our freedom and therefore fail at their root to protect us.

So, what does this have to do with Black Lives Matter — a movement of Black peoples against police terrorism and state sanctioned violence?

If we want to progress forward today, we must start from a place of shared resistance.
Click To Tweet

If the United States will not honor the sovereignty of Native nations, then why would the U.S. honor the Civil Rights of Black peoples stolen and brought here as property? Civil Rights are legislated protections to guard the basic civility — which is arguably less than the human rights — of those who have been dehumanized and treated as property for centuries. “Civil Rights” is a legal construct named after the notion of “civility” or “formal politeness and courtesy.” “Sovereignty” is one’s inherent freedom from the control of another, the right to determine one’s future, and one’s supreme power over a body politic.

“Sovereignty” is foundational to our human existence and is not a subjective concept — either you are free or you are not. Native peoples were here first. Their claim to this place is supreme. If the U.S. refuses to honor their sovereignty, the supreme claim of Native nations, the United States will not flinch to revoke the Civil Rights and freedoms of “formerly” enslaved Black peoples and their descendents based on a somewhat subjective notion of “civility.” Therefore, we need each other. We need to stand with each other. We need to learn from our shared history remembering the times when our unity strengthened our capacity to effectively resist our common enemies.

Why White America Demonizes The #BlackLivesMatter Movement
theestablishment.co

Our movements are not separate. Rather, they are inextricably interconnected. We need each other if we are to free ourselves from the yoke of genocide and enslavement in this place we call the United States. Police terrorism and mass incarceration are really just an extension of this country’s original sins. While young Black people were killed at a sharply higher rate than any other group in 2016 in the United States, the murder of Native people by police also increased. With less than 1% of the United States being Native to Turtle Island, any increase in police murders of Native peoples is deeply painful and a continuation of genocide.

Due to the insidious nature of anti-blackness in nearly every community, including Native communities, it is easy to feel protective of Black movements and our current hypervisibility in our pursuit for justice. That said, Native peoples have always been made hyper-invisible by way of erasure and national amnesia. This is how non-Native settlers make sense of living on stolen land amongst the relatives of genocided peoples. As Black peoples, we must be willing to push back against this erasure, even if it means sharing a hashtag. At the same time, Native peoples must be willing to push back against anti-blackness — a tool used by the white supremacist system to divide and enslave. If we are to share our movements in a meaningful way, we must also take accountability for the ways in which we have internalized white supremacy and colonialism, thereby perpetuating harm against each other.

The organizing efforts of Not This Time, a campaign initiated after the killing of Che Taylor by Seattle Police, is an important example of how Black and Native solidarity strengthens our movements. Not This Time organizers — along with the Puyallup, Muckleshoot, and other Co-Salish tribal nations — have been signature-gathering for I-940, known as “De-Escalate Washington,” a ballot measure which would allow police to be prosecuted for unjustified deadly force. Local tribal nations have donated approximately $285,000 to the campaign and provided hundreds of hours of volunteer time. On December 28, Not This Time delivered 355,000 signatures to the state, qualifying I-940 for consideration. The organizing efforts and success of I-940 thus far illustrates how Black and Native communities can work together to end police terrorism.

These Indigenous Feminists Are Ready To Lovingly Detonate The Patriarchy
theestablishment.co

In the end, I do not view #NativeLivesMatter as a co-optation of #BlackLivesMatter. It is NOT the same as #BlueLivesMatter, which is a direct affront to our movement to end state-sanctioned violence and police terrorism. It is NOT the same as #AllLivesMatter, which is an attempt to discredit our claim of systemic oppression and targeted state-sanctioned violence — crimes of which both Black and Native peoples are historical and present day victims.

We often say that when Black people get free, we all get free. Likewise, I believe that when the sovereignty of Native nations is recognized, the sovereignty of all beings impacted by U.S. imperialism will be recognized.

Since the inception of this country, the struggle and the enemy of Native and Black peoples has been one in the same. Our survival and thriving depends on our willingness to share our movements and stand up with and for each other.

#BlackLivesMatter #NativeLivesMatter #JusticeForJasonPero #CheTaylor #ReneeDavis #CharleenaLyles

‘I try to write out of love.’

Our favorite stories at The Establishment are those that linger long past the point of closing a browser. These pieces don’t just exist in the moment — they exist in perpetuity, inspiring further pondering and lengthy conversations days, months, and even years after they’re written.

Imran Siddiquee’s stories are the kind you can’t shake — and that’s a very good thing.

Perhaps this is because Imran is so obviously thoughtful, clearly taking his time to explore every facet of the fraught, nuanced issues he tackles in his pieces. When a writer is so openly reflective, you as a reader are compelled to reflect deeply in turn.

The best pieces don’t just exist in the moment.

Consider, as an example, “How We Learn To Love ‘Good’ White Men With Guns,” a story that uses chilling, compelling facts to make keenly observed points about racist conditioning. “In order to challenge a lifetime of learning to center white lives and seeing violence as good,” Imran writes, “we need to see — recondition ourselves with — images of Black people who are not just killing or being killed.”

Or sit for a while with this paragraph, from “How To Make White Movies”:

“The lives of white men are surely worth representing on screen, but creating the illusion that systems of oppression have no part in those lives is a noticeable mistake — and one which reinforces oppression. In the same way that we acknowledge that the lighting or score can alter a film, so can an ignorance of race and gender.”

Passages like this are designed to stay with you — to enter your very consciousness, helping you to see the world, and your own beliefs, in a new light. If there’s a better writing aim than that, we don’t know what it is.

Below, Imran talks about coffee highs (a conspicuously recurring theme among our writers of the week), Insecure, and the song from Monsoon Wedding that he just can’t get enough of.

You can generally find me writing in short, infrequent bursts on a coffee high while daydreaming about the movies I wish existed.

The writers that have most influenced my life are bell hooks, Virginia Woolf, Arundhati Roy, Junot Diaz, Rabindranath Tagore, this is so hard to answer!

The TV character I most identify with is: the entire staff of “We Got Y’all” on Insecure.

My most listened to song of all time is: Not sure about all time but maybe “Aaj Mausam Bada Beimaan Hai” by Mohammed Rafi (and mostly because of Monsoon Wedding).

My 18-year-old self would feel surprised and confused and maybe excited about where I am today.

I like writing for The Establishment because it’s an openly feminist space, and the editors are passionate, engaged, and always making my writing better.

If I could only have one type of food for the rest of my life it would be Kitchuri (the kind my mom makes).

If I could share one of my stories by yelling it into a megaphone in the middle of Times Square, it would be: “The Truth About the Men Who Riot and Kill.”

The Truth About The Men Who Riot And Kill

Writing means this to me: I try to write out of love, to carry forward the work of those before me, to try and dismantle oppressive systems and build something new — but also maybe out of fear, curiosity, and necessity.

I get a warm feeling when I see the word “asexual” in someone’s bio.

So when, after scrolling on Facebook for entirely too long the other day, I saw an article on graysexuality, I happily clicked the link. (Graysexuality is an asexual-spectrum orientation that describes people who sometimes experience sexual attraction, but usually don’t.)

The article was informative — but the comments sucked. While some readers were excited and relieved to finally discover that terms like “graysexual” and “demisexual” had perfectly described their experiences, others were dismissive. Commenters posted things like, “Did the author just make up a word?” and “Oh look at all the special snowflakes.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen comments like this. Contemptuous comments trend on articles where writers talk about their experiences being brown, disabled, queer, pansexual, aromantic, genderqueer, trans, neurodivergent, and any marginalized identity that the general public isn’t aware of (or comfortable with).

Time and again, the question is raised: Why do people need all of these labels?

My answer to this is simple: Because these labels are our identities. They describe our cultures, communities, genders, sexual and romantic orientations, bodies, and/or our additional experiences with privilege and oppression. They are crucial for anyone whose experience isn’t positioned as the default in our society.

Labels are crucial for anyone whose experience isn’t positioned as the default in our society.
Click To Tweet

Before I found the label “asexual,” I was struggling to understand why I didn’t have a real interest in sex and didn’t feel sexual attraction. I was confused, afraid something was wrong with me. I worried I’d never have a successful romantic relationship.

Seeing the word “asexual” while browsing the web one day helped me put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Once I had a word to describe my experience, I had a starting point. I had something Google-able. I did research and found a community of people who were just like me. Other aces (the nickname for asexuals) gave advice on how to navigate a very sexual world as an asexual person. They also provided emotional support. They reminded me that I was not broken or alone. I gained more confidence and began to understand my (a)sexual agency.

How I Learned To Love Being Aromantic
theestablishment.co

That’s what labels do — they empower marginalized people. Through our identities, we build communities, we learn about ourselves, we tell our own stories, we celebrate ourselves in a society that often tells us we shouldn’t, and we come together to stand up to oppressive systems.

Our identity labels hold power.

It’s time to acknowledge this reality — and to do so, we must start by debunking some myths.

Myth #1: “You’re a special snowflake.”

People use “special snowflake” to disregard the experiences of marginalized groups. They think we’re purposely trying to be different and that we invent these labels so we can feel special.

When you think people with different identities are special snowflakes, you suggest that the only “normal” people are the people who are just like you. There’s a word for that: bigotry.

People with this mindset need to think beyond their own experiences. If you are cishet (cisgender and heterosexual) and grew up surrounded by cishet people, then you might not be familiar with different sexual orientations and gender identities. But just because you only know cishet people doesn’t mean other people of various orientations and genders don’t exist. The world is a lot bigger than your circle of friends, believe it or not.

When you think people with different identities are special snowflakes, you suggest that the only ‘normal’ people are the people who are just like you.
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Think about it this way: There are around 470,000 words in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. If you only know half of them, does that mean the other half aren’t real? Obviously not. And denying their existence doesn’t make them disappear. It just makes you look foolish as hell.

Those who’ve been routinely othered aren’t trying to be “special snowflakes.” We seek a community of people who are like us and we want to be respected in society, despite our differences.

Myth #2: “You’re all mentally ill.”

I’d need an entire book to explain how problematic and wrong this statement is. So I’ll just focus on the main reason: You can’t use your bigotry to make armchair diagnoses, and you can’t call something a mental illness simply because you don’t agree with it. Doing so not only attempts to invalidate people’s experiences, but also perpetuates the stigma surrounding mental illness. This stigma keeps neurodivergent people from seeking out therapy, medication, and other beneficial resources.

Shitting on neurodivergent people and belittling any other group that isn’t exactly like you is straight-up oppressive.

Stop Calling It ‘Identity Politics’ — It’s Civil Rights
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Myth #3: “You can’t go around making up new words.”

Actually, we can. We have been. And we’ll continue to do so.

Where do you think all those words in the dictionary came from? Someone made them up. Over time, people create new words; this is how language evolves. So you may want to loosen your grip on that 1999 edition of the dictionary.

Remember those Earth-like planets NASA recently discovered? Well, they’re currently in the process of naming them — because that’s what often happens when you discover something that you didn’t realize existed. Notice I said “you didn’t realize existed,” not “new.” Many of these identities aren’t new — it’s just that people are only now starting to learn about them and name them.

Many of these identities aren’t new. It’s just that people are only now starting to learn about them and name them.
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I understand that there are tons of identities; I understand that it can feel impossible to keep up with all the terminology. But guess what? That’s okay. That’s why we have Google.

I also understand that these identities can contradict the very things we’ve grown up learning all our lives (like the gender binary), and that they force us to rethink the very social constructs we believed to be 100% truths. For example, in discovering my asexuality, I had to unlearn many myths about human sexuality that I’d previously believed.

But there’s a simple way to deal with these challenges: Embrace diversity in the human experience beyond what you’ve already heard about.

On a daily basis, people are discriminated against for being something other than white, thin, neurotypical, cisgender, heteroromantic, heterosexual, and whatever else is perceived as “normal” in our society. If you fit into any of these categories, then you experience privilege. Some of your identities are more accepted, or at least more widely known. You don’t have to explain yourself everywhere you go. You don’t have to worry about facing discrimination throughout your day.

That’s privilege.

If you’re privileged — and everyone is in some form or another — recognize it. If you want to, be an ally for those who aren’t privileged in the ways you are. And if you don’t want to, at least stop pretending other people’s identities and experiences are affecting your lifestyle. All they’re actually doing is making you Google a little more often, and getting you to think about our society’s problematic social constructs.

Many people’s identities have little to do with you.
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Yes, there’s a huge learning curve when you’re reading about various identities online, which sometimes requires extra digging and parsing through academic language (hint — try blogs and intersectional feminist sites. They tend to use everyday language). But just be willing to try.

And if you aren’t able to do that, at the very least, stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.

In short: Mind your business.