Another Brown(less) Queerbomb

This year I made the best of it and I'm glad that I'd mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepared myself for a full night of not feeling represented and being largely ignored. This year, a fellow brown, Kwueen Shadez collective member that had accompanied me last year opted out, leaving me alone to table my own Philosophactivist, Afro-Genderqueer, and Queer Herbalist warez. I was supposed to be sandwiched in between allgo (our stateweide queer people of color organization) and the San Antonio 4 advocates and filmmaker. But, allgo wasn't present this year. (We'll get to that later.)

If you haven't heard of who the San Antonio 4 are, you should check out the documentary website and kickstarter page HERE and HERE. It's ridiculo what happened to those women. Basically three chicana lesbianas were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 15 years of prison, along with a fourth innocent lesbiana, the so-called ringleader, who received 37 years behind bars. Check out the rest of their story on the websites.

So- back to the set up. It was SA4 and I and another brown guy representing a local socialist organization that were stuck out in Siberia across from the bar and between two designated trash cans for cigarette butts.

Nice.

It was hard for people to really see us in the milieu. We attracted a few cool folks, though. Some queerbombers were genuinely interested, other avoided us like the plague or came just to get candy from the SA4 table without even hearing their story first.

Hmph.

I decided to be even more strategic this year and had a philosophactivist "How Radical Are You?" Quiz on my table.

The questions were:

1. What is gender justice to you?
2. Do your circles include people of color?
3. DO the events you attend include people of color?
4. What do you know about the actual experience of the people in your neighborhood?
5. What do you know about housing, employment, legal and health care discrimination based on race in Austin?
6. Have you considered becoming an ally?
7. How do you build with people who aren't the same race/ethnicity and/or don't share the same language?

Yea. That.

I was so grateful for the handful of folks who'd come up to me and engage in conversation. Guess who mostly looked at the quiz. Ding Ding Ding. A small handful of folks of color. I do have to admit that some awesome allies looked it over. I got some awesome allies at my table this year and that made it worthwhile. 

Now, before folks pat themselves on the back about this, it's important ya'll know that some were friends of friends or had heard me spit spoken word at recent events or had been to my play, etc...

Still, I hope to really build with some of those folks who were with different organizations and who were basically on point. 

What does on point mean?

Well there's this whole thing with acknowledging your privilege, checking your privilege, and not assuming that you've mastered anti-racism/cultural competence/etc. or other forms of anti-oppression just because you're "liberal" or "leftist". It's also not culturally appropriating, not just saying you're "radical" and "progressive" and continuing to exploit, ignore, and silence folks of color or perpetuate cycles of systemic oppression by denying these cycles exist or pretending to be oblivious-

 "I'm color-blind." "We're all the same." 

Ring any bells? Should be a red flag, actually, because if you're able to not have to see color or cultural differences or go through certain types of oppression and you can assume that they don't exist, you've got a big, heaping pile of white privilege. 

Inclusion

Now let's talk Inclusion...

For some time, it's been known that Queerbomb isn't the most inclusive space. I understand that there are just thousands upon thousands of queer white people. We're (POC) certainly "outnumbered." I understand that there are some dope, brown organizers of the event. What I don't understand is why there are not more brown performers and community organizations and groups that are POC-led and queer allies. You can't tell me they don't exist. I work with them on a weekly basis. 

As far as performers, I thought to myself this year, "Why didn't they ask Las Krudas to perform?" What about some of the dope, brown and queer artists and queer allies at Authentx? Why couldn't they get Monica Roberts of TransGriot to come speak? Or Black Transmen, Inc. ? Or any of the number of folks associated with allgo's statewide network. Why didn't they have radical queer brown poets and academics like the ones at organizations like Fahari come? Or how about individuals like Erica GDLR and the radical poets she rolls with? Why couldn't we have a short 10-minute piece by Q-Roc? Or folks like scholar, artist, and activist Omi Osun Joni L. Jones or some of the other queer, brown artivist/academics that are here locally? Or what about the number of activist allies from Resistencia or PODER. All it takes is asking a few people...and most of us know each other and organize ACROSS ISSUES.

I thought this was radical. I thought this was political. I thought this wasn't like the other Pride event. I thought we were going back to its roots. Well its roots are oppression. Its roots are a group of people who were not able to gather without feeling repressed. A group that was excluded due to their different experience. Sound familiar? The Stonewall Uprising happened largely because of a group of brown transwomen (and a butch/transman) who many in this "movement" have forgotten. I dare folks to look up the true history of this movement.

"Radical simply means grasping things from the root."

Angela Davis

Right? Right on.

If we are going to get back to the roots, shouldn't we acknowledge this true history? Shouldn't we acknowledge the multitude of oppressions that are compounded in the complex identities of queer people of color? Shouldn't we also honor ALL people in this movement? Shouldn't we speak to ALL of our experiences. How much longer can QPOC leave parts of themselves at the door to hang out in "the movement" and be a part of these events?  (Even though we're clearly in the background and have been part of the foundation).

Should we (mainly those not affected) continue to play into color-blindness? Should we continue to pretend that everything's ok...because..."look at the numbers! People are showing up, who cares that they're all white!"

Should brown people continue to separate and isolate themselves due to feelings of exclusion. Should organizations representing them not show up because of this exclusion and because they feel ignored by the majority white folks that are there?

On alternate brown, queer universes

So, there were a number of after parties and two friends of mine threw an awesome birthday party (not even associated with QB, mind you) where everyone dressed like gods and goddesses, danced, talked organizing, politics, or just kicked it. There were a handful of djs present and there were majority Q/POC and allies. There were so.many.folks.there. Some even had braved queer bomb and showed up afterward, like me.

My question is this. Every year, there's a brown party or event created as an alternative to the others. Must we continue to exclude ourselves and create alternate spaces so that we can feel accepted?

"You're dividing the movement with those spaces", they say.

The best part about these queer, brown "alternate" spaces  is that we can bring all parts of us into these spaces. Why in the world would we go to a place with thousands of white queers who may say racist things to us or deny our experiences, self-expression, or existence when we can just do our own thing? Hasn't that been the "larger movement's" thinking for the past few decades? Since there are more white folks, why ruffle the feathers? They're not uncomfortable. Why be uncomfortable? Brown folks just don't want to come out to the event anyway. There aren't that many of them anyway. They'll be uncomfortable anyway.

Take a picture of this and save it for when you want to be reminded of what white privilege (and privilege, in general) looks like. Then, check it and do something about how it's manifesting and destroying community.

Well folks, I could go on and on about this. As always, I'll say that us QPOC are not obligated to come up with an answer to how this should be changed or how folks should work through their privilege and subsequent decolonization. Do not feel the need to tokenize yourself or to allow yourself to be tokenized. Remember Self-Care. If you are down to help folks sort through this, you are awesome. If you can't because it is damaging to you, you're still amazing.

That's all-

for now...

Oppression and Austin: Drag Performance, Racism, Misogyny, Transphobia

I'm almost certain that a number of folks of color may have seen a drag show where a white queen may have appropriated someone else's culture. I'm not sure if I'll call it "inevitable" but I'll say that it seems to be a fundamental part of drag culture. Women putting on kimono's, acting out the part of black women like Whitney and Aretha and maybe even Selena or Shakira. In comedy routines folks may even play the part of trans, sex workers or immigrants.


What's wrong with that? Drag is all about being campy, right? Maybe folks were being political? Anyways, art shouldn't have to answer to anyone...


In Austin, TX after two back to back incidences over 100 queers came together in a town hall meeting for a discussion on drag performance and anti-oppression.


The community conversation took place due to two drag performances portraying race and gender in, what some deemed, a very problematic way. One is actually a character, named Christeene, who is a trans, sex worker who, some believe to be portrayed problematically. The other performance happened on Cinco de Mayo and was called Sequin de Mayo and involved drag performers dressing up as cholas. The fliers had cholas behind bars on them.

Here is the letter that helped spark the discussion.

Here's a brief summary of what went down in our "anti-oppression" discussion which had over 100 people:


Description:

"Does political correctness divide the queer community? What are the pitfalls of oversensitivity? What are the pitfalls of accusing others of oversensitivity? How can our performances unite our community? How can our performances hurt or oppress members of our community? How can we productively answer these questions together?

Recently, there has been a lot of debate, discussion, and disagreement about queer performance practices (drag, music, etc.) within our community. This event is an opportunity for us to gather in the same space and address concerns that affect us all. The hope is that, by having these conversations, we will reach mutual understandings that benefit all of us in the queer community of Austin. EVERYONE is welcome and encouraged to attend: whether you have a lot to say, or aren't sure what to think; whether you perform all the time, or have only been to one show. Or maybe you've never been to a performance and you're just curious about what's going on in Austin's queer community."


Facilitators:


Matt Richardson, Assistant Professor in English and African and African Diaspora Studies

Juniper, an organizer anti-oppression facilitator


Format, Contract and and Working Solutions:

Town Hall update report:

So...I muscled through being mispronouned (the guy apologized 3 times afterward...but it still didn't erase that I had told him my pronouns as part of the intro exercise and he STILL got it wrong in front of over 100 queers or that I will be mispronouned in the community til I die...possibly).[aside: a guy called me "she" in front of the whole queer community when my pronouns are they/them or he/him or more preferably, Toi]


The anti-oppression conversation in a room of predominantly white queer folks was...interesting. Though I would say that we QPOC did establish critical mass. We heard a lot of perspectives. No Jerry Springer stuff popped off and, for the most part, everyone listened to the experience of those 1)who felt empowered by drag performers and 2)those who were hurt at some point by racist things that drag performers had done in our community. Drag performers also talked about their own personal experiences with their art.

I think it only became problematic when folks started saying it was our (POC's) job to come to the table and asking what they could do to fix this (though we QPOC and allies had already said it wasn't our job minutes before).

Other problematic points happened when a few performers said that no one should change their art and that they should be able to represent other cultures if they had good intentions...and a brown person gave license to folks dressing up as cholas but to be the "best chola they could be".


I particularly liked statements by Las Krudas...especially Odamayra when she said it wasn't her fault if white folks thought that their cultures were too boring to portray on stage.

I also liked when folks mentioned that if these (white) folks were so down, why didn't they show up when it was mainly QPOC performing and support in that way instead of "inviting" us or trying to be more "inclusive" in their (predominantly white) spaces.

I hope the conversation continues but I learned in Brooklyn while being concerned about "integrating" mostly white queer radical spaces that that's not what I'm here to do. I am more concerned with helping folks w/in our (POC) community heal from oppression. I am not to be tokenized. There is too much healing to do and I know that white folks need to do their own work with other white folks. (And yes! There are other white folks doing this work:
http://www.antiracistalliance.com/whiteness.html ) And many, many more groups exist that you can google...instead of asking a POC person!

You know, there was one (white and 1/? Native American?) lady who cleared at least 3 QPOC out of the room (and shut down I don't even know how many) because she kept saying hurtful things during her 3 minute schpiel during the discussion. She was crying and saying the system wasn't white folks' fault and asking how could she help us (POC). Folks kept getting up and walking outside to the designated safe space and she even acknowledged this as she talked. Afterward she went into the safe space outside to track down the people who had left to ask what she had done wrong and how she could fix it and telling them that "we" (QPOC)want to be heard but that them leaving the room wasn't going to fix it.

                                                                          W.T.F.


Sigh.Sigh.Sigh. Odamayra also mentioned that it's interesting how all these folks will show up for something like this...but not to build or support anything political (immigration rights, unemployment, etc.).
All in all my assessment is that it was a good step for this community. Folks from the community came up with a list of solutions...there's an email list to set up a way to continue the conversation.There's already a scheduled anti-racist conversation. Sure, folks mingled long after the forum. But...I'm skeptical about what will come from it. I snapped my fingers and clapped my hands at more comments than I tried not to roll my eyes at. But...have I seen this before? Time will tell...I am grateful to the organizers who took a lot of heat and the facilitators for jumping on the skillet and roasting a little bit during 2 1/2 hours of dialogue. They kept composure and made sure this epic (for Austin) dialogue happened in a "civilized" manner.

Click here for one of the organizer's perspectives.

Of course there are still ripples of conversations happening online which are catty, negative, ridiculous, racist and are denigrating what happened the other night. Of course there are.

You see, here's the thing...

Visible queer culture in Austin is largely white. Don't believe me? Visit QueerBomb on June 1st and check out the demographics. That's not to say that there aren't brown queers here. Oh we're here. We have our bubble...we have our own events like the Puro Chingon Social club which hosts the Free and Queer Cinema, and allgo (our statewide QPOC non-profit org) puts on all kinds of workshops, plays by Adelina Anthony, D-Lo, readings by Tim'm West, and holds space for us marginalized and underrepresented in the "larger queer culture" of this not so liberal or progressive city that still thinks they're "weird".

Weirdly conservative despite what they think...wish...hope.


True Counterculture in Austin is brown...

The counterculture here is truly those Q/POC and allies who meet for potlucks in each others homes, and create events like Artivism--

a QPOC poetry event featuring poet activists/artivists and political poetry, and carve unlikely spaces for themselves among the hippies, hipsters, and blind conservatives. 
The truth is- it's really easy to be deemed as liberal and progressive "for the South". Austin holds on to this image of being so avant-garde so tourists will come and maybe even stay awhile. But this doesn't mean that this city or ANY city who proclaims to be progressive is actually progressive. It's all relative? 
Yea. I suppose.

The saving grace of this city is that it is a college town and that the university is (usually) progressive. (At least the brown people and allies there keep it that way) 
 UT Austin has events like Abriendo Brecha

which is designed to bridge the gap between academia/scholarship and social justice work.

There's also the John R. Warfield Center for African American Studies where the awesome QWOC professor Omi Osun Joni L. Jones can be found breaking down barriers, talking about movement and reclamation, and writing her books,plays and poetry.

Deep down however...there is a dark history of segregation starting with laws passed in 1928. Check out the East Austin Gentrification Timeline

There is still housing, employment, and health care discrimination based on race and socioeconomic status. And it is so deep and continues to be written into policies. Oh that's everywhere...you say? It's inevitable, you say...
Oh see, I thought that's what made cities that are liberal and progressive different. I thought they were supposed to be hip to these issues and be set on doing something about some or all of them.

So many times I hear white radicals and hippies talking about institutional and structural racism and patriarchy and the importance of anti-racism and such but rarely do I see much being done about it in a substantial manner.  It's just something cool to talk about with your friends at the coffee shop that was built in what used to be a brown neighborhood until the city wanted to "revitalize" the place which added to displacement, harassment and violence from increased law enforcement against black and brown bodies. But that's good because now there will be all these businesses pumping money into...well oops...not the neighborhood. But ...they're good for the community...ooops...not the "old community". But boy those new homes and "community markets" sure look great...don't they? Oh no..they are getting too suburban and the prices are getting too high so on to the next neighborhood with their privilege and mobility in hand! Don't like it POC...why don't you just move, too?

Because being poor is expensive.

Because the poor are considered a "risky" investment gas, groceries, interest on your house, credit cards, loans, etc. are more expensive.


Why am I saying all this?
Because the queer community is a microcosm of this macrocosm. Things are actually exacerbated when multiple identities and oppressions collide. When a person embodies multiple marginalized identities (queer, brown,female,etc.) and they are part of a "larger community" that fails to see how a performance or an event perpetuates cycles of structural racism (because of the unearned privileges they've earned due to their white skin) it's kind of hard to empathize with their "art" or "movement" or continue to see folks as "radical" or "progressive". And even harder to believe that this "pushing of boundaries" is designed to be transgressive or political. Campy becomes just another way to perpetuate stereotypes. 

This is a great article on that sort of thing.

Just because a person is brown...

And I find it necessary to add that just because a person is brown doesn't mean that they are not invested in white supremacy unconsciously or consciously. We are all dealing with internalized oppression and the color of our skin does not guarantee that we are not perpetuating the oppressive cycles that we have been socialized to take part in and perpetuate. It is really hurtful to our Q/POC communities when a person from our community co-signs onto racist/sexist/transphobic events because they haven't checked what they've internalized or given any sort of analysis to the performance/event. 


Art is art...

Some will say- But art is art. Artists don't have to be held accountable...artists don't need to be responsible. Art doesn't always have to be political.

And I'll say...we Q/POC will continue to hold you responsible and accountable for racist bullshit. We are tired of racism and sexism being perpetuated all "for fun". We are tired of you being able to sleep at night after you've wounded several in our community. We face this every.single.day. And while it's not your duty to make us feel comfortable...it's not our duty to keep you feeling comfortable either. 

As soon as you decide to appropriate or exploit, it's considered political. Whether you want it to be or not.

And we are going to call you on it. And we are going to keep calling you on it until you get that it's not ok to exploit, appropriate and expect us to assimilate into what you deem as entertaining. You keep doing your thing...which is exactly what being privileged and entitled is about...and we'll keep being "angry" and brown and calling you on it. 

These anti-oppression conversations that are popping up around the country are extremely important because they are an attempt to unravel the fabric of a country which has been interwoven with racism, xenophobia and sexism. Don't worry- it will be transformed and restitched. But no...you won't be able to hold on to your oppressive views and get away with it under the guise of "artistic freedom" or "just having fun". You can look at your fellow white artists and ask the token brown one to cosign that your art is ok...but you and I both know that it's not. Never was...never will be.

I know it sucks that now you'll have to think about everyone you may be wounding with your art. But you know what's worst? Being born into a racist system and dealing with racism and other types of oppression on a daily basis in the media, health care, your job, school,etc. and being invisibilized, tokenized,  or told that this oppression doesn't exist or is just for entertainment purposes. Take that shoe and wear it for a while...and then come back and say "art is art" or ask Q/POC to teach you about their pain and what to do to heal it or call us angry because we won't tolerate it anymore...especially within a smaller queer community.

The time has come for queers perpetuating oppression to be called out and for people to be held accountable...plain and simple. This isn't new. It's been happening since the 70s and maybe even long before. But our voices are even louder now with social media and our allies. 

So, instead of expecting folks to re-assimilate into an ancient model that works for the few, it'd be best to just succumb to decolonization and become an ally or just a better human being for it.

This is not POC's work

Though I've written about this here and here, I'd like to reiterate that this anti-oppression and decolonization work, if you're white, needs to largely be done with other white folks.  It is not my job to help anyone "slum it" for a day workshop or help you understand yourself and your place in this system better. Why? Because along with that comes the expectation that I will suck up or invisibilize my own pain to make you feel better. I've seen many an anti-racist workshop that had white folks in tears and brown folks tending to them and telling them they are not a bad person. And you're not. Well I don't know you...but I assume you're not if you are reading this particular blog or have been referred to it by some awesome friend of yours.

The thing is, we as POC have been trained to hide our own feelings and deny our own experiences of pain and put white folks' first whether it's at our jobs or in other daily interactions. It's residual from slavery and I dare you to analyze your everyday interactions ...I mean, really scrutinize them, and see where you can see this taking place.

So yes...it's not POC's work to educate. We have our own internalized oppression to heal from and we can't heal you from yours simultaneously. Though, we can be compassionate and be a part of larger conversations like the town hall meeting that happened the other night. But remember, some people left wounded and that's why folks might opt out of these conversations. This should be respected. All anti-oppression work, of course, must have a foundation of compassion, respect and understanding and it may take some time to get there...

but we will get there. 
Paso a paso...one step at a time.

Food Justice Part 2: Queering Food Justice

If you’re a person of color with a low income it’s important for you to know that conversations about your ability to access foods, yes, conversations about your very well-being are happening behind your back.  Even if you make a living wage, you might want to know that here in Austin (and in many other metropolitan and even rural cities), policy affecting your community’s food sovereignty is being shaped largely without your input or consent.

Basically, our community , considered the “target population” of many mainstream “food movement” efforts has had little say in if we’d like farmer’s markets, supermarkets, community gardens and access to the knowledge and skills that will help us sustain ourselves.

I’m not saying we’ve never been asked. I’m saying that it’s rare. There are a lot of “allies” who tend to want to take the lead in this movement. They think they have the solutions and know what we want and need. The problem with this is- the food movement operates under a few hurtful assumptions. Some are completely detrimental to the way we view ourselves as a community and as a People. Some are damaging to how we see our identity.

So why is this important to us as QPOC? Because a large percentage of us have a lower socioeconomic status and are therefore more likely to be food insecure. Where we sit at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality makes us highly vulnerable and subject to the policing of our food and economic system. Our lack of resources, especially TIME, allows for outsiders (and sometimes even well-meaning allies) to come in and make decisions FOR us- maybe even AS us- based on their assumptions and their own personal beliefs about what will make our community better. Many of these solutions are not culturally appropriate or relevant. Since colonization those in power have been operating under a “one size fits all” model complete with assumed assimilation.  We are being recolonized.

It’s hard to stay on top of decolonizing the various systems that wreak havoc on our communities. How are we supposed to do this when we’re barely surviving? We have to get back to the old ways- the ways of our ancestors. We have to support each other in ways that are sustainable to our own families and communities. It’s time to get back to community kitchens where neighborhoods come together and cook for/eat with each other. It’s time to pay ourselves for growing our own food. It’s time to establish our own black and brown-owned cooperatives where we decide what goods belong in those stores while creating our own jobs and opportunities. No, this isn’t new- it was taken from us. Then denied and withheld from us.

In the colonizer’s model and their capitalism we POC are to continue to have less and less resources yet devote more and more time to supporting these very broken systems that don’t benefit us. All the while we assimilate, losing ties to our cultures while decimating the environment and surrendering our emotional, social and spiritual well-being.

So how do we resist? No..how do we do *more than resist?

Depending on our skills and resources- this may look like you as a single parent feeding healthy food to your children. Yes, this is radical! This may look like participating in healthy potlucks with a group of friends. It’s bartering your services. It’s establishing collectives and co-operatives and therefore creating an alternative economy in which money continues to circulate within our community.  It’s demanding policy change that deters development that displaces our community and exacerbates food deserts. It’s demanding fair wages and supporting black and brown business owners. There are so many ways we can resist and co-create change.

Transformation is occurring as you read this. The revolution is already under way. There are people like Toni Tipton-Martin, founding member of Foodways Texas and author of The Jemima Code, who are committed to reclaiming our foodways and celebrating our cultural and culinary heritage. There are organizations like Food for Black Thought who are committed to supporting local grassroots efforts in black and brown communities in organizing around food related issues in East Austin. There are also alliances forming in East Austin and in Dove Springs to co-create solutions for the lack of access to healthy and affordable foods.

There are also efforts happening across the nation. (And across the world for that matter). Check out efforts in the East Bay like People's Grocery, the Mandela Food Cooperative, Phat Beets Produce, the Oakland Food Connection. There are efforts in Detroit like the Black Community Food Security Network, D-town Farms, and the Ujamaa cooperative food buying club. Will Allen's Growing Power, Inc. urban farms are located in Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago. In NYC there are Just Food, Farming Concrete, La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, and Black Urban Growers. These are just a small number of the community efforts for food justice led by people of color.

As QPOC living at the intersections we should be aware of what is happening to address access to food because issues of food insecurity affect everyone, whether we want to believe it or not. What can we do as a community to assist in the transformation of our food system? What can we do as a community to better our economic situation? Let’s share some food and exchange some dialogue. We already have the answers.

Overworked and Underpaid...what else is New?

It is no coincidence that many of the QPOC you know might have 2 or 3 jobs (paid or unpaid) and don’t have a lot of free time. I’ve been thinking about this as the first production/reading of my play, GenderqueerFiles: La Qolectiv@, is coming to a close. With an all QPOC cast and crew, practices were difficult to have since all of us were on the grind and had very little time for run-throughs. I’ve thought about this "time situation" throughout my life. I thought that my mom, aunts and friends’ mothers who were all women of color working themselves into the ground was normal. Everyone’s parents didn’t have time to kiss them goodnight, take them to a park, or put them in girl or boy scouts, right? Wrong.

Time is one of those resources that folks living in poverty can never afford. We pay and pay and pay for it. What’s a little time worth to our community?

Queer folks of color at the intersections of race, gender and sexuality are up against multiple layers of discrimination based on appearance and something as small (or large) as other’s perceptions. Like many POC, we work extremely hard and get paid astronomically less. Many times we are expected (consciously or unconsciously) to work 10X harder by our white (and sometimes even brown) supervisors. Many times we are seen as mere work horses. This is all tied to perceptions of people of color as lazy, underachievers. People (maybe not even people) to bear the brunt of hard labor like we've done for centuries. Sometimes these perceptions are even tied to beliefs that we should be grateful that they’ve hired us or let us work there instead of a white person. And essentially they’re doing us a favor by working us into the ground. We should definitely thank them.

A lot of times we internalize this. We carry these toxic beliefs within ourselves. These beliefs that we have a horrible work ethic and that we must work like a dog and be underpaid and be appreciative for whatever scraps we can get. Sometimes we even feel that it’s normal to be constantly depressed with chronic pain. As a person with lupus, I must say that I know what this is like firsthand. As a person who has worked in a number of predominantly white corporate and non-profit environments, I can vouch for many of these sentiments. 

Even at 16 working at this ice cream place, I remember how my supervisor remarked to my mom “Oh, Toi is such a hard worker.” Back then I was proud. Who wouldn’t be proud of being called that? Later in my adulthood I began to understand the implications of that sentence. Was she saying this because she had a belief that as a brown person that I wouldn’t work as hard and she had been pleasantly surprised? As I saw how hard I was expected to work as compared to my white or male co-workers, the meaning began to dawn on me.

Basically, in the eyes of the “dominant”, we’re still chattel. No matter how far we pretend or wish we have progressed…we’re still in the fields with the cotton and the overseer in many ways. Many of us still don’t own land. Either we never did or we’ve been displaced. We’re having to go back to “folk remedies” because the health care system is not only broken but many times we opt out of much needed care so we don't have to deal with racism, classism and homophobia among other –isms and –phobias. As our country slinks into more and more of an economic depression- we are egregiously backsliding with civil rights.

This false Ameritocracy kills. Do people really get what they deserve? Earn their keep? Are folks living in poverty in that situation because they haven't worked hard enough?People of color are working themselves into early graves. A lot of us are not emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually well because we don’t have time to take care of ourselves and many of us are also putting others needs before our own. Many of us live our lives on the grind til we’re in the ground. People are not meant to live their lives this way. Our nervous systems are blown out before middle age because of all that we’re up against. Our bodies give out on us a decade before those living the good life, with resources and power.

Yea, maybe it’s hard to hear- but many of us already knew this…

If you don't believe me or need more facts about the inequity- or just want cold, hard facts for those in disbelief, here’s more:

Important facts to note from Queers for Economic Justice's report “Tidal Wave: LGBT Poverty and Hardship in a time of Economic Crisis:

• White gay men in same-sex couples have poverty rates of 2.7%, compared to 4.5% of Asian or Pacific Islander, 14.4% of black and 19.1% of Native American gay men. While just under 6% (5.7%) of non-Hispanic lesbians are poor, that rate is more than tripled (19.1%) for Hispanic lesbians in couples.

• African Americans in same sex couples have significantly higher poverty rates than black heterosexual couples and are roughly three times higher than those of white people in same-sex couples. Poverty in LGB communities is raced.

• Home ownership rate of black individuals in same-sex couples raising children is 20 percent compared to 63 percent of those in different-sex marriages raising children.

• 12 percent of Black LGBT people in the survey had a household income of less than $15,000.

• In San Francisco, about 10% of Asian same-sex households earned less than $25,000; there was not a large difference between what lesbian and gay male households earned

• Large percentages of the transgender population are unemployed and have incomes far below the national average. While no detailed wage and income analyses of the transgender population have been conducted to date, convenience samples of the transgender population find that 6%-60% of respondents report being unemployed, and 22-64% of the employed population earnsless than $25,000 per year.

• 59% of transgender survey respondents were clearly living in poverty, with the actual number estimated at closer to 65%.When the official unemployment rate in San Francisco stood at 4.7%, more than 35% of the trans community in the city was unemployed.

• Nearly 60% of respondents to a Good Jobs NOW! survey earned under $15,300 annually and only 8% earned over $45,900. 40% did not have a bank account of any kind. Only 25% were working full-time. 16% were working part-time, and nearly 9% had no source of income. Over 57% reported experiencing employment discrimination.

• In a survey of 165 low-income LGBT adults in New York, 35% reported living in homeless shelters, 7% on the street/subways, 3% in SROs (Single Room Occupancies) and 26% with friends/relatives or in temporary living situations

     For the full report you can go here.

Sometimes queer folks of color, in order to feel we can be ourselves or to feel comfortable in a work environment, have to accept less pay. Maybe because we’re at a non-profit or just starting out working for ourselves. If we are doing anything in the arts and expecting support from our community- that’s tough to get sometimes because 

a) our community doesn’t necessarily have the most capital and b) there’s are a lot of internalized -isms that go on (i.e. “shade”) that might keep our projects from getting off the ground for some time. Newcomers usually lack an extensive network of support that queer "veterans" have established. 

If we're going to thrive and not just survive we've got to support each other and continue to build sustainable communities. We've got to create our own jobs and employ ourselves and our community members. We've got to call out these dynamics and hold folks with positional power accountable for their erroneous expectations, ideas, and actions. We've got to address our own internalized oppression and support each other as a community in doing this healing work. We have to continue to wake up and not continue to expect this broken system to be fixed solely by the government. Though it'd be great if they'd acknowledge (and actually do something about the fact) that a lot of us don't earn a living wage and have a poor quality of life because of it. Working ourselves into the ground for less and less pay is obviously not the answer. We've got to continue to be creative with our solutions and we can't let people continue to pretend as if the system is going to change with the "usual" people using the same ineffective tactics and promoting the interests and working for the interests of a very privileged few.

Food. Justice. Part 1: The Color of Food Justice

People's Grocery- West Oakland, CA

Working as a food justice organizer, one of the first actions I took was to scour the internet, libraries, bookstores and organizations for faces like mine. I knew there had to be brown faces in the food justice movement somewhere and it was vital to my survival as a person dedicated to food, health, and economic justice to find people of color who “got” it. Folks who didn't overuse “vote with your fork” and think that everyone has “time” and resources. Folks who saw the reality and spoke to systemic issues that made it all the more difficult to be “green” and “sustainable” and a “locavore.”

Which systemic issues, you ask? Not having enough money for some organic food. Not having access to healthy foods because you live in a neighborhood with only convenience stores and fast food restaurants and no grocery stores. Not having a backyard to grow food in or a community garden in your neighborhood. Not having time to buy and cook healthy food let alone grow your own food. Not being told that your ancestors diet was healthy and not being told the truth behind our behaviors today and the way that capitalism has bred our community's sickness and contributed to an obscene amount of preventable deaths....genocide.

The narrative that we frequently hear obviously comes from mostly privileged white folks who seem to omit race and class from their conversations. It's convenient and comfortable for them. All the work our ancestors did devoid of labels such as “local” and “organic” seems to also get left behind. Which predecessors? Great black agriculturalists such as George Washington Carver who may have been one of the first to have been concerned with sustainable agriculture. Great brown farmers and activists like Cesar Chavez who saw firsthand the toxic affects of what was being put on the crops farmworkers harvested (and continue to harvest).

In the dominant narrative it seems like black and brown folks are ignorant about health and healthy food. Perhaps we're “too lazy” to start a garden and grow our own food. We don't want to just spend the extra money on the “front end” instead of on hospital bills due to our eating “habits” on the back end. It seems much easier for food activists to focus on our behaviors and glaze over issues of time and employment (working two and three jobs), space (maybe we don't own land or don't have access to community gardens or live in food deserts full of fast food restaurants and corner stores with unfresh and processed foods). There's an overall assumption that we just don't want to be healthy and that we don't care about our family's health. Very little is said about discrimination within the health care system, decreased access to health care, limited access to healthy foods and land, and other issues that communities of color haven't had a lot of control over.

It's easier to play the blame game. It's easier not to check detrimental and erroneous assumptions and to be guided by stereotypes and biases. It's easier to be exclusive and not include brown folks into the food movement. Race talk just ruins things. There are tokens to report back about what's going on in the community. Even though the reports aren't needed because it's all the community's fault. Obviously they like to eat that food, live that way. Quick get together a brigade to get them all to Vote with their Fork...

even if they can't afford one.

Environmental Racism- A Journal Throwback but Forever Relevant

I stumbled across a blog/journal a few students and I had from March and April 2010. It documented our journey into learning more about environmental justice and environmental racism. A group of us worked throughout our time at school toward supporting an environmental justice group called MEAN (Mossville Environmental Action Now) in Mossville, Louisiana. Environmental racism is something occurring all over this country and world, actually. Many people don't really stop to think about why refineries, power plants and other types of factories set up shop in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Or why these communities may have toxic dumps, brown fields and wastelands and other wonderful biproducts of capitalism that end up in our backyard and doorstep so many times. There are many stories of people (a lot of times women) who have come together to fight against places like Conoco-Phillips who pollute their water, air, and soil. These chemicals lead to chronic asthma, birth differences/deformation, cancer, and all kinds of health issues for generations down the line. The majority of folks affected are low-income communities and communities of color.

Mossville is a community that began with freed formerly enslaved people. You may know a similar story. They were doing ok for generations and then the greedy (white) capitalists showed up. The land was/is "unincorporated" and not owned "legally." These businesses/entrepreneurs (gluttons?) began to build their factories (14 right now in Mossville to be exact) and dump their sludge into their water and their chemicals into the air and ground. People started getting really sick but there wasn't a lot that could be done. Have you ever tried to take on a million dollar industry?

The state government is in "cohoots"- collaborating with these factories. Many people work at these factories and when we talked with them, we found they had a strong allegiance to the companies who gave them such great health care. (??) It is a really complicated situation and the federal government paid lip service for some time before CNN did a story and colleges, outside organizations, and the United Nations started listening and demanding action.

Unfortunately this is a common story for communities of color and many communities don't have the media or government's ear. You may be living in one right now or have family living in a community like this. A toxic town. Maybe a part of cancer alley?
Mossville Video

You can read my reflection on our community organizing and "participatory action research" here.
**Participatory Action Research or "PAR" is a way of collecting information for organizing that honors, centers, and reflects the experiences of people most directly affected by issues in our communities.For more about Participatory Action Research:
http://www.incite-national.org/index.php?s=129

The 17 Principles of Environmental Justice- written by People of Color at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, 20+ years ago:
http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html

Environmental Justice Movement Background:

"Up to the late 1960s, racism was defined as a doctrine, dogma, ideology, or set of beliefs. The central theme of this doctrine was that race determined culture. Some cultures were deemed superior to others; therefore, some races were superior and others inferior. During the 1960s the definition of racism was expanded to include the practices, attitudes, and beliefs that supported the notion of racial superiority and inferiority. Such beliefs and practices produced racial discrimination.

However, researchers argue that to limit the understanding of racism to behavior misses important aspects of racism. Racism is also a system of advantages or privileges based on race. Racism is thus more fully understood if one sees it as the execution of prejudice and discrimination coupled with power, privilege, and institutional support. It is aided and maintained by legal, penal, educational, religious, and business institutions, to name a few.

Environmental racism is an important concept that provided a label for some of the environmental activism occurring in minority and low-income communities. In particular, it links racism with environmental actions, experiences, and outcomes.

The term environmental racism, or environmental discrimination, is used to describe racial disparities in a range of actions and processes, including but not limited to the:

• increased likelihood of being exposed to environmental hazards
• disproportionate negative impacts of environmental processes
• disproportionate negative impacts of environmental policies, for example, the differential rate of cleanup of environmental contaminants in communities composed of different racial groups
• deliberate targeting and siting of noxious facilities in particular communities
• environmental blackmail that arises when workers are coerced or forced to choose between hazardous jobs and environmental standards
• segregation of ethnic minority workers in dangerous and dirty jobs
• lack of access to or inadequate maintenance of environmental amenities such as parks and playgrounds
• inequality in environmental services such as garbage removal and transportation

During the 1980s people of color began organizing environmental campaigns to prevent the poisoning of farm workers with pesticides; lead poisoning in inner-city children; the siting of noxious facilities—landfills, polluting industrial complexes, and incinerators—in communities like Warren County, North Carolina; Altgeld Gardens (the "toxic doughnut" on Chicago's South-side); Convent, Louisiana's "cancer alley;" and Kettleman City, California. Activists also demanded the cleanup of communities like Triana, Alabama that had been contaminated with DDT (dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane), and the monitoring or closure of facilities like Emelle, Alabama's commercial hazardous landfill (the largest of its kind in the United States). In addition, they questioned the placement of large numbers of nuclear waste dumps on Native-American reservations.

Meanwhile, activists, scholars, and policymakers began investigating the link between race and exposure to environmental hazards. Two influential studies exploring this relationship—one by the U.S. General Accounting Office (USGAO) and the other by the United Church of Christ (UCC)—found that African-Americans and other people of color were more likely to live close to hazardous waste sites and facilities than whites. The study by the UCC was particularly important because it made an explicit connection between race and the increased likelihood of being exposed to hazardous wastes. The studies also made the issue of race and the environment more salient in communities of color."

From: http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/background-environmental-racism#

You can read more here:

Mossville is Like a Toxic Town
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-26/health/toxic.town.mossville.epa_1_superfund-site-environmental-justice-cancer?_s=PM:HEALTH
A paper on Environmental Justice
http://ecojusticenow.org/resources/Eco-Justice-Ethics/Environmental-Racism-and-Environmental-Justice.pdf

Environmental Justice groups:
National
Cali

Health is a serious issue for QPOC and POC. With all this energy and focus on just surviving it can be the first to be overlooked. While some of our health is affected by the individual choices we make, you can see that there are some huge determining factors that are involuntary. Do we control what's in our air and soil and therefore our food? Are diabetes and cancer actually  genetic? Do we as POC have a "predisposition" to these chronic dis-eases or is it tied to pollution of our environment and food sources? How can we gain more autonomy- more control over our environment and bodies?

I'll return to environmental justice, sustainability and intersections with food and economic justice in the future.

As always- giving you food for thought.

-AGQ

Shades of Masculinity: On Masculinity, Strength, Perceptions of Power and Desirability

What does strength look like to you? Many are caught up in the ways that we've been socialized to believe what strength looks like, especially as it pertains to masculine presenting folks. A lot of times I see “strength” being tied to the performance of male roles and traits...especially aggression, cockiness, etc. I see it tied to a specific kind of power that has been relegated to males and that is connected to the outward expression of dominance in all its ways of being portrayed.

Inner strength is often overlooked. A masculine of center person with an enormous reserve of inner strength who is “holding it down” but who does not express an aggressive attitude or what we've come to label as “masculine” or “male” energy is sometimes seen as weaker or not compatible in the ever-perpetuated butch/femme dichotomy.

I think we need to re-examine maleness and masculinity in a way that doesn't carry the assumptions of what “masculine energy” looks like. Is it so far entrenched in our psyche or queer collective consciousness that we must tie masculine to stereotypical “maleness” and oppose it to stereotypical "femaleness" and femininity in this cyclical way that is neither definitive or serving to us?

There are different shades of masculinity, but only one of those shades or sides of the spectrum receives precedence: the butch, the AG, the aggressive, the dom, the macha. They are usually seen as more “legit”and also more desirable. This plays out similarly in transmasculine and transmen circles a lot of times.This outward display, the way a person “holds themselves” or projects a certain image of this particular brand of masculinity, and essentially the way they interact and participate in this world as this very specific portrayal of masculinity is often validated while other forms of masculinity are invalidated.

Masculine energy. Should this always be tied to white patriarchal notions? Let's define that...the colonizers had very specific ideas about the place of a man and woman and what the behaviors of a man and woman should look like. A woman was responsible for the private sphere (the home) and the man was responsible for interactions in the public sphere. The man had a whole list of traits and characteristics tied to what we think of today as "masculine" and "manly" while the woman took on the polar opposite of all these "manly-man traits." She was to be soft-spoken, demure, docile, loving, the caregiver, etc. This "balance" was stifling to women and in many ways against the ways gender roles played out in the pre-colonial societies of our ancestors. I won't "go in" on this..as I've talked about this in a previous post.

Should the butch/femme dynamic always take its cues from this type of “balancing” of male and female roles and behaviors? Why does masculine and feminine have to look so static and replicate hetero relationships and a patriarchal model?

Are QPOC subversive in their relationships? Do we sometimes appear to be replicating this model but our relationships are more complementary like those relationships of our ancestors? I can't say I've seen much of this in the very visible relationships in some of our circles. But maybe the folks in these relationships aren't part of any "scenes". Maybe they've been alienated like us masculine folks who don't adhere to the assumptions of how we should act and be. I don't have the answer.

And if we are subversive- in our attempted subversion do queers, feminists, womanists, and radicals still accidentally recreate the ever so problematic patriarchy by unconsciously being committed to concepts of masculine and feminine being tied to these entrenched societal notions of male and female? 

At the end of the day, I guess I'm just confused about why strength looks like an aggressive male or female. Why is it tied to the traits of a "man"? Why is this "more desirable" in our communities a lot of times? And what is masculinity and femininity really if we take away these assumptions and the characteristics we're socialized to believe are male and female? What is masculine and feminine energy when not tied to perceptions of strength and roles we've been assigned? And why is this energy in people so polarized? Why is the polarization of this energy valued so much in this society? Is it because it makes it easier to know who should have power and who shouldn't? Seems to work pretty well in a male-dominated society. But with the Amazons, were the "less aggressive" women deemed weaker? Did they have less power? How does this work in matrilineal and matriarchal societies (that people swear don't exist...but I personally know of at least 2). 

So many questions. Plenty of time.

btw-
¹male noun
a : a male person : a man or a boy

b : an individual that produces small usually motile gametes (as spermatozoa or spermatozoids) which fertilize the eggs of a female
alright...hmm...scientific

²male

adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of the male sex 
of, relating to, or being the sex that produces gametes which fertilize the eggs of a female 
ok more science...

Origin of MALE 

Middle English, from Anglo-French masle, male, adjective & noun, from Latin masculus 

First Known Use: 14th century <<<<uh...

mas·cu·line- 
a:male

b : having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man <<??

Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a 

man.

^^^What does that even meeean?^^^



Just some food for thought.

-AGQ