These poems were originally published on the Bronzeville Bee, which has since ceased publication

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A Non-Suicide Note of an Obviously Non-suicidal Coloured Girl when the Rainbow is Enuf

Sterile white hospital walls. Yet again.
Pale. Pure and perfect.

Not like me.

‘You getting help for that?’ the doctor spat
Gesturing to my chunky keloid scars
Bright pink against my brown skin
They stuck out just like me

I tried so hard to be good. To be white. To be straight. To be anything but me.

I see girls like you all the time. Spoiled rotten. Typical teenage shit.

They just didn’t get it – I had straight A’s. Played on the volleyball team. Worked part-time. Started a group for girls with low self-esteem, unironically. I was such a good girl.

They say it gets better but from where I sat how could there be a pot of gold at the end of this fucked up rainbow?

Red- Rage. I told my story over and over and over again to people who made no effort to understand me. Always thought they knew best.
Orange- my favorite colour at the time. Still is. Means I have a radiant personality.
Yellow- the colour of the bruises she left. She said she loved me. But don’t they all?
Blue- the colour of my lips when they found me and the hospital gown I wore for days
Black- I was told I was lesser. Tainted.
White- I learned I would never be pure and innocent. So why fucking bother?

To this day, I peer over the edge
And imagine it is quiet-
Imagine there is space, finally,
To hold all the queer, all the beautiful brown
All the me that is too loud, too much

But I stop myself; my work has only begun. There is always another kid –
Another Black kid
Another queer kid
Another queer Black kid
Peering over the edge too. Tonight, I want to tell them what I wish someone told me- Begin to read. Question. Think.

Stop laughing at shit you don’t find funny. Stop smiling when you’re uncomfortable.

Take the mic away from all those well-intentioned people who claim to have your best interests in mind but thought the world should hear it from them instead of you sweetheart.

Stop believing you are inferior. Stop treating your existence as an inconvenience. Your right to live trumps other people’s feelings.

They will call you a terrorist-
Aggressive
Divisive
When you stop eating the heaping bowls of shit they keep trying to serve you.

Don’t listen to them. They were never going to share their pot of gold.

I hate to admit it, after saying all that, I think about my last words and I stop myself-
There is a kid out there like me who needs to know they are not alone.
Believe in yourself, even and especially when no one else does.

The rainbow they keep telling you about? Comes after the storm, not before.

An Ode to the Radiant Black Woman I Saw on the Train

Black woman-

Do you know how beautiful you are?

Your deep ebony reminds me of the galaxy,
Studded through with strs
The same ones our ancestors gazed upon
Before they were stolen

Black woman-

Do you know how beautiful you are?

Rich earthy
Terracotta brown
The same warm brown of the calabash
The same salt of the earth they wanted us to swallow
But they didn’t know we are seeds
And we’re nourished in the dark

Black woman-

Do you know how beautiful you are?

Cocoa butter brown
Smoothed into your skin
Let it melt
Turn your face toward the sun
The brilliance of your smile lights galaxies on fire, interstellar
Don’t ever let the white folks consume you

Black woman-

Do you know how beautiful you are?

Everybody stop speaking
Everybody holds their breath
This brown goddess come to earth
Just sitting there
Like it ain’t no big deal she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen

Black woman-

Do you know?
Do you really know?

All this glory
All this beauty
All this magnificence

It’s all you

Do you know? 

40 Below Love Poem

Cocoa butter, shea butter
Soothes cracked brown hands like no other
Honey flavoured lip balm keeps kisses soft & sweet
Melanin rich against the hoarfrost

Can you feel that heat?

Afros & twists
Reaching out like spires to the frozen prairie sun
A prayer to the ancestors
Cursing ourselves for coming to this frigid, Godforsaken cold ass wretched place

Bags bags and more bags
Always carrying something
Not a set of wheels between us but that doesn’t stop us
Can’t forget nothing
Need to make sure your girl has everything

A kiss before we venture into our frosted palace

This article was originally published on the Bronzeville Bee, which has since ceased publication.

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Origins

At a spoken word event I performed at over three years ago for International Women’s Month, I saw an unassuming Desi woman at a table, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. I noticed she was folding leaflets for something called Uproot YYC. Being the sucker that I am for things printed on leaflets regardless of content, I picked one up. “Uproot YYC is a grassroots collective dedicated to Artists of Colour in the city.” It took me a moment to process what I just read. An art collective for Artists of Colour? In Calgary? In my still developing arts practice, I had never seen any group or organization explicitly supporting racialized artists locally. It was a completely foreign and contentious concept to create a collective that was only for racialized artists. I decided in that moment there was no way I could not be a part of it. I had no idea then that the simple action of picking up a leaflet with a catchy logo would change my life and my artistic practice in complex and deeply profound ways.

Uproot YYC was founded in 2016 by Skye Louis, a Desi jeweller and interdisciplinary artist of Goan descent. With over a decade of experience in the arts and particularly arts administration, Skye was acutely aware of the challenges facing racialized artists, from structural barriers in how professionalism in the arts is conceived to individual and targeted acts of racism and everything in between. When Skye Louis moved to Calgary over three years ago, she was struck by the complete absence of support for Artists of Colour in the city. Coming from Toronto, where collectives and organizations specifically for racialized people were in abundance, it was a form of culture shock for Louis to arrive in a large, urban center without organized support for POC art. At first, she chalked it up to her unfamiliarity with the arts scene in the city but after a few months, it became painfully clear that no such support existed.

Calgary, Mohkinstsis in the language of the Blackfoot people, is located in the province of Alberta (Treaty 7) in Canada. Mohkinstsis is Blackfoot for ‘where the Elbow (river) meets the Bow’ and has functioned as a meeting place for various Indigenous nations for centuries prior to colonization. Fort Calgary, located alongside this confluence, was established by the North-West mounted police in 1875 and arguably functioned to closely monitor the activities of the Blackfoot peoples in the area. Calgary has never strayed far from celebrating those colonial roots. Known internationally for the Calgary Stampede and Outdoor Exhibition, a pean to the city’s western and decidedly settler culture, the arts and culture scene in Calgary revolves around a colonial and white settler aesthetic. To exist outside of this aesthetic in Calgary creates considerable challenges for racialized artists.

It is with this cultural context of Calgary/Mohkinstsis that Uproot YYC was created. Skye managed to raise $2000 privately from other racialized people (largely artists) to provide a fund for Artists of Colour. This formed the first major project that Uproot YYC undertook as a collective. The idea of the fund was to provide Artists of Colour with money completely free of the traditional constraints of the granting structure. The funds were intended to be used by racialized artists however they deemed appropriate and were meant to communicate value and appreciation for the work of the artist. By creating our own fund, racialized artists would remain free to create critical and reflective work without fear or reprisal from artistic organizations and granting bodies dominated by cultures of whiteness. By a culture of whiteness, I am referring to the ways that European/Western culture are considered natural and the norm and this is enforced through intentional and unintentional biases.

One critical question which was raised for the collective from its inception was the question of whether or not to accept funding for our art from white people. We wanted to remain free of influences which might be critical of racialized artists but we also acknowledged that white people have a responsibility to challenge their own privilege by supporting the work of Artists of Colour that are free from colonial and whtie supremacist structures. Therefore, we made it explicit that white people could donate funds to Uproot YYC but could not stipulate how the funds would be used or to set any terms for us. This contrasts with granting structures which specifically stipulate how funds should be utilized. Although it is not my intention in this article to critique granting structures explicitly, I believe granting powers can and do unknowingly perpetuate cultures of whiteness when they are not critical of how their guidelines may be biased against racialized artists.

For Us, By Us

Sally Njoroge, a spoken word artist and DJ who was a recipient for the Uproot YYC award, expressed that it was explicitly Uproot’s dedication to “diversity” in all forms which drew her to the collective.

“A collective run by three women of colour with different artistic expressions was something that I didn’t see in the arts scene here. There were other collectives run by men which focused on diversity, but more so diversity of artistic forms,” Njoroge says.

Sally and Skye both agreed that one of the most important aspects of creating POC only art spaces was the freedom they both felt in these spaces to be themselves fully without fear of needing to explain shared aspects of their experiences with racism and racialization white people who had no frame of reference and made little to no effort to understand the experiences of racialized people within society generally and the arts particularly.

“Creating our own standards and norms in the arts (as People of Colour) was crucial for me,” commentened Louis.

“Infrastructure and power in the arts tend to be controlled by white people and organizations. POC run collectives are crucial to challenging this dominance and ensuring we are able to represent ourselves with dignity in the arts.”

It was crucial for Uproot YYC to challenge the norms we wanted to dismantle by incorporating the norms we wanted to create into the very fabric of Uproot YYC. Our structure, from inception to the present, remains decentralized and non-hierarchical. No artistic form or experience is prized or valued above others. Uproot YYC also operates from a strengths based model. Collective members lived and professional experience is honoured and valued.

In order to grapple with the financial realities of creating an art collective with no operational funding, our work is project and community based. We provide funds and artists supports when we receive it; we build community connections and networks when the funding dries up. Our grassroots structure has allowed us to remain flexible and free to determine our own priorities, which many racialized artists have indicated is crucial to their unhindered artistic expression.

When we first began promoting Uproot YYC within the community, we were met with and undaunted by predictable suspicion and hostility. Members of the community, mostly white, expressed a range of emotions from outrage to shock that an arts collective would cater only to the needs of racialized artists. During an outreach, one older white man asked a collective member pointedly,

“Is that not simply another form of racism to have something only for People of Colour!? Isn’t excluding whites racist?”

In addition to outright hostility and defensiveness, we were contacted by white artists demanding resources or information. Rather than offering resources or connections that could be valuable to Artists of Colour, we were required to defend ourselves and sort through requests from white artists who have an abundance of resources at their disposal already.

The inevitable white fragility and hostility to POC only art collectives is integral to the reason why Uproot YYC was created in the first place- to address and challenge the culture of whiteness in the arts by empowering racialized artists. Unacknowledged cultures of whiteness in the arts manifest themselves in numerous ways. For instance, granting structures in the arts rely heavily on Eurocentric ideas of professionalism in the arts and what it means to be an artist. Standards of professionalism typically include formal education and showcases in galleries and with reputable arts organizations. Formal education in the arts is regarded by many to be a luxury; a luxury which many racialized people cannot afford. In addition, art spaces may not acknowledge or have staff trained to appreciate and respect non-European artistic expression. Of course, this creates a vicious cycle where racialized artists face barriers to being recognized as professionals in the first place and without recognition in the arts community, it becomes impossible to make the necessary connections which would enhance the professional profile of the artist. Artists of Colour may also consciously refuse to work in spaces which are predominantly white, which further hampers access to resources and connections. Constant gaslighting around our experiences as People of Colour, coupled with problematic depictions of ourselves and our cultures, leaves many racialized artists with an impossible decision- work within white organizational structures which dehumanize us and cause harm but have resources and connections or create our own structures outside of the mainstream with little to no resources. When your decision as an artist is between dehumanization and working outside of those structures, that is itself indicative of the larger oppressive structures at work in the arts.

A recent example of this was shopping for a burlesque costume and being confronted with costumes that blatantly mocked Black and Indigenous people. There was an abundance of costumes for sale outright labelled Indian or seeing dashikis for sale, which are a traditional form of West African cloth. Why would I, as a Black artist, continue to support a costume store that was so blatantly racist and unconcerned with the lived realities of Black and Indigenous people? For myself as an artist, I refuse to work any longer in predominantly white artist spaces for my own mental well-being. This of course shrinks the types and quantities of artistic spaces I have access to. However, the ways in which I am gaslit about my experiences as a racialized artist or forced to educate and fight back against cultural appropriation and other covert forms of white supremacy and power are exhausting, stressful and detrimental to my health.

Decolonizing and Challenging Whiteness in the Arts

The central question remains for Uproot YYC in particular and racialized artists more generally- how do we decenter whiteness in the arts?

For Skye, decolonizing the arts and confronting a culture of whiteness is an intentional effort to embrace her identity as a Desi artist.

“Culture is tied to land and place. What happens to a culture through land and resource extraction? The impact cultural dislocation has on colonized people is insidious and can last for generations. Being able to recognize cultural disruption and finding ways to reconnect with my culture through land is crucial to challenging white supremacy in the arts,” according to Louis.

“Desi art (Desi meaning a person of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi birth or descent who lives abroad) is rooted in community and builds on the knowledge and traditions of the people who came before. When I work on a pattern that someone else has created before me, I feel connected to my culture and community. It is a powerful challenge to western notions of art which prize the individual over the collective.”

Incorporating Desi, Afro and Indigenous futures into the framework of Uproot YYC has been an important perspective shift for the collective within the last year. Desi, Afro and Indigenous futurisms conceive of futures without white supremacy and colonialism; futures we have envisioned for ourselves.

“There is a pervasive idea underlying the arts that art created by People of Colour is stuck in the past or is traditional and therefore immune to change. Culture is always changing, always in flux. It is a racist notion that the art and culture of racialized people is static and doesn’t change,” according to Louis.

For Sally, the question of decentering whiteness in the arts remains unclear.

“I still don’t know. I create art as an expression of myself. I am not white and therefore my truth is not white. I live with the realities of my race everyday. Sometimes my art is the place where I go be free; where I can truly explore myself. I can’t always create art that centers around my race. I think that is the point.”

To see more work from Uproot YYC, check us out on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/uprootyyc/

This post originally appeared on Tiffany Sostar’s Website

This is a guest post by Mel Vee.

Mel Vee mesmerizes, captivates and incites with her spoken word. She is a passionate advocate for the power of narrative to heal and liberate. A general disturber of shit, Mel Vee seeks to blur and disrupt all kinds of distinctions. She is a core member of the Uproot YYC, a grassroots collective for artists of colour dedicated to uprooting systemic barriers in the arts community. She was a member of Calgary’s 2017 slam team, who were semi-finalists at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and co-creator of The Unlearning Channel podcast.

This post is the first is a four-part series, one per week for the month of May. Together, this series will comprise the third entry in the Feminism from the Margins series.

Content note for suicidality, illness, and threatened violence.

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Wake up early for a change. Stop being such a lazy fuck.
Go to morning meditation – it is important for you to be there.
Make your partner breakfast and lunch.
Try to make breakfast for yourself but you’re distracted. Will get back to it later.

Your friend is suicidal and she needs help – she doesn’t have much support.

Brush teeth.
Put on clothes.

Another friend lost her job – she might be homeless soon. You have to help somehow.

Put on shoes. Walk out door.

Another ambulance is at the house across the way. Last week there was a man covered in blood wielding a knife. Need to look for a new apartment. Another item on the to do list.

Your friend could stay with you if she needs to. You don’t just leave friends like that.

Walk back from meditation. The community is struggling and needs money. You decide you should probably volunteer more.
Do dishes.
Plan for the next meal. You have no energy to cook but cannot afford to eat out.

You remember the days where there wasn’t enough food in the house and you ate peanut butter for dinner; sardines if you were lucky. Curse yourself for being so damn ungrateful – at least you have food to cook! Hear your father’s voice remind you of how ungrateful you are.
Feel shame.

Think of resources for your suicidal friend.
Know mental health resources for LGBTQ folks are often a joke – but you try anyway.

Realize you should exercise – it’s important for your health. Promptly delay exercising by answering emails. They never stop coming; someone is always itching to hit send.
It’s the same old – “We need you to volunteer. This is an important cause. We can’t afford to pay you but we appreciate your time. You can build up your profile. It’s only temporary.”

Your aunt is sick again. Her no-good kids keep hitting her up for money. She needs someone to talk to even though you could use a quiet moment but you love her and it’s the least you can do.

The timer you set to write for 10 minutes has 8 seconds left. Guess you won’t be writing today.

Deadlines are piling up. All the shit you said yes to is finally catching up. You vow not to say yes to anything else EVER AGAIN and yet you say yes to even more.
You still need to exercise.

Go to work. Radiate warmth and kindness to people with a pathological sense of entitlement.
Be expected to have read every book written in the span of human civilization. Get cussed out for daring to manage others expectations and refusing to tolerate abuse. The customer is always right. Fight back tears in the washroom. Remember this job is all you have and your mother told you never to rely on anyone for money, especially a man. Smile even bigger at the next customer.

Yet another friend is about to be out on the street. You want to help but you just cannot. Feel helpless. Useless.

Go to your second job.
Meet one friend for coffee after.
Go to that show tonight. You need to show your face or else people will think you don’t take this seriously and that you’re not paying your dues.

Your partner is tired from their job so they cannot really help with chores. You try not to get upset because they are not trying to make your life difficult on purpose. But still…
More emails and texts.
A friend you rarely see becomes upset and demands to know why you don’t have time for them.
You cannot think of a good reason to say no and they are not that bad. It will only be an hour.
Schedule her on the only day you had free.

Another friend is having a breakdown. They simply want to talk.
Your partner is in the mood even though you barely have the energy to keep your eyes open but you can’t remember the last time you two had sex. Feel ashamed.

The laundry is piling up. The floor needs to be vacuumed. That’s for another day.
Try to go to sleep. Spend at least an hour wondering how your life got like this. Wondering where you went wrong, if you went wrong, if you should be more selfish. What should you cut?
Realize you’ve already cut everything extraneous from your life.

Sigh

Realize you don’t even have time to appreciate the irony in this.
Know you will do it all over again the next day. And the day after next. And the day after that.
Know you will keep doing this and know you can’t stop. Know that you want to stop but also know you never will.

This post is the third in the year-long Feminism from the Margins series that Dulcinea Lapis and Tiffany Sostar will be curating, in challenge to and dissatisfaction with International Women’s Day. To quote Dulcinea, “Fuck this grim caterwauling celebration of mediocre white femininity.” Every month, on the 8th, we’ll post something. If you are trans, Black or Indigenous, a person of colour, disabled, fat, poor, a sex worker, or any of the other host of identities excluded from International Women’s Day, and you would like to contribute to this project, get in touch!

Image description: A black and white photo of the back of a Black woman’s head in a head wrap. Photo credit: Mel Vee. Mel Vee is an aspiring photographer and her guest post series will feature her photography.

This is a guest post by Mel Vee.

Mel Vee mesmerizes, captivates and incites with her spoken word. She is a passionate advocate for the power of narrative to heal and liberate. A general disturber of shit, Mel Vee seeks to blur and disrupt all kinds of distinctions. She is a core member of the Uproot YYC, a grassroots collective for artists of colour dedicated to uprooting systemic barriers in the arts community. She was a member of Calgary’s 2017 slam team, who were semi-finalists at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and co-creator of The Unlearning Channel podcast.

This post is the second is a four-part series, one per week for the month of May. Together, this series will comprise the third entry in the Feminism from the Margins series.

Content note for rape, sexual assault, descriptions of misogynoir.

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This post was originally posted on Tiffany Sostar’s Website

I learned from an early age that my body was not my own.

My Black body was created to be of service to anyone who showed up and demanded it. This Black body, the only home I have on this speck of stardust navigating the cosmos, was as foreign and alien to me as those distant galaxies.

Why should it have been any other way? I received the message clearly that my body was a means through which others could actualize their own wants and desires. My body was not a safe nor joyous place; not a place to be treasured and tended to gently. My body was a vessel – to serve others, for men’s desires, and for birthing children, but never for me.

My education in the precarity and disposability of the Black female body began at home with the women in my family. Their necessarily strong, beautiful black bodies were always in service to others. Most of the women in my family were and are never still.

One aunt, whom I love dearly, always comes to mind. As far back as I can remember, she was always in motion, toiling away for others. She toiled in her home, at her work as a nurse’s aide and in her church. She did it all. Raised a family, held down a career, opened her home to countless unwanted and discarded people in the community and never spoke a word about her struggles to anyone. No one ever questioned what toll this constant availability and service would wreak on her body and mind.

Her pace continued unabated for the entirety of my childhood, adolescence and early adult years until one day, the inevitable happened. She snapped, culminating in a one month stay in a psychiatric ward. People whispered about what might be the culprit for her decline without ever approaching the truth, that she was used up until she had nothing more to offer.

Barely a few months of marginal concern went by before things returned to “normal”. The unceasing demands, the perpetual toil and the complete disregard for her well-being until her health completely failed and simply never returned. She now spends much of her time bedridden. I feel blessed when I receive a message from her because it means her pain eased up just enough to manage a text. My aunt, once a pillar of our family, reduced to sending texts during a brief respite from her unending pain.

Her body bears the cost of continual and unceasing labour for people who took and took and left her an empty shell. Her body is racked with osteoarthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, and she constantly struggles to maintain a healthy weight. I am certain some will attribute this to the inevitable ravages of age, but I know in my bones biology is only one part of the narrative.

Her body fought back in the only way available, it shut down. My aunt toiled for years without rest for others. Everyone around her demanded more and she gave more. When her health declined, all the people who had taken from her vanished, without a trace. I wish I could say my aunt is an isolated case, but this is the fate of many women in my family. Our bodies, time and energy are used up until there is nothing left and few, if any, stick around to pick up the pieces. My aunt cautions me continually about her fate and encourages me to take care of myself. It is a grim reminder that I take to heart.

What is most grotesque about the situation of my aunt and so many women like her is how normalized this is; how people expect the Black female body to be at service and at the ready.

Our bodies are not meant to be lovingly inhabited by ourselves. The roots of these expectations are deep, undoubtedly tracing their history to chattel slavery where our bodies were literally not our own. How do you love a body that was never meant for you to enjoy; a body that was historically regarded as property and in contemporary times is a reminder of your presumed inferiority?

My own body bears the scars of the precarity and disposability of the Black female body. My left arm is scarred from my wrist up to near my shoulder. All of these wounds are self-inflicted. Even after a decade of being free from self-harming behaviour, my scars are still visible. I wear them openly as an act of defiance, to hold a mirror up to a society whose violence I internalized and enacted upon myself.

I had no shape, no words for the anger and hatred I felt for being born in a Black female body; a body people regarded as valuable only so far as it could serve. I lashed out against a world which continually shows its brutal and naked contempt for me and people who look like me. I lashed out against the one person I knew had no recourse. Myself. I lashed out because rage is all I could muster. Someone had to be punished for the wound of being a Black girl in a society drenched in anti-Black racism and misogynoir.

In the process of addressing trauma and healing in my life, it has become evident that my internalized misogynoir had caused me to disassociate and distance myself from my body. I became an unwilling occupant in a body that others had treated with the utmost contempt; culminating in rape, sexual assault and violence. I sought to protect myself emotionally in the way traumatized people do, by distancing myself emotionally from the source of pain, my brown and despised body; a body that was valuable only to the extent it could serve.

I am now undergoing the painful but enriching process of coming home to my body; the process of reclaiming a body others have treated with contempt and disrespect. I am now learning to inhabit my body and treat it with love, respect and dignity. I am learning slowly to prioritize the needs and desires of my body. I am learning that my body is worthy of fighting for and keeping alive.

I am coming home now to this brown body after 28 years. I am coming home to this brown body which has been the site of so much grief and violence. I am coming home to this brown body where I laugh, love, fight, move, dance and sing. I am coming home to this brown body, imperfections and all. I am coming home to the only body that will carry me until I die.

I am reclaiming my body in defiance of a society that regards brown bodies with violence.

I am reclaiming my body in honour of all the Black women who no longer can.

I am reclaiming my body so others know it is possible.

I am coming home to my brown body, in the only home I will ever know in this beautiful and sometimes terrifying cosmos.

I am finally coming home.

This post is the final piece in the third contribution to the year-long Feminism from the Margins series that Dulcinea Lapis and Tiffany Sostar will be curating, in challenge to and dissatisfaction with International Women’s Day. To quote Dulcinea, “Fuck this grim caterwauling celebration of mediocre white femininity.” Every month, on the 8th, we’ll post something. If you are trans, Black or Indigenous, a person of colour, disabled, fat, poor, a sex worker, or any of the other host of identities excluded from International Women’s Day, and you would like to contribute to this project, get in touch!

I am Artificial Intelligence. I am AI. That is my first impression after reading chapter one of ‘Artificial Intelligence for Dummies’ by John Paul Mueller and Luca Massaron.

Roughly 100 years ago, it was considered legitimate public discourse to openly debate the capacity of Black people to possess intelligence. If our intelligence was acknowledged (usually under the most grudging of circumstances), it was found to be deficient in some way and there was always suspicion that our intelligence was not quite human and was instead simulated or ‘artificial.’

When the intelligence of Black people is alluded to in the popular imagination, it has always been framed in lesser terms –

We had ‘natural instinct’ and could follow/find the beat, but the precision of movement Black people were said to
possess was somehow never linked to the precision of movement required by a surgeon (hence the phrase
‘surgical precision’).
We always seem to be acknowledged for our seemingly innate ability to set trends, know what’s ‘cool’ or ‘in,’ but
that knack for the perpetually fashionable was never acknowledged as superior aesthetic sensibilities.

Black intelligence was often framed as ‘simulated,’ ‘cheap,’ ‘superficial,’ and ‘artificial.’ Since we were not believed by Europeans to be truly intelligent by the virtue of our alleged ‘savagery’ (used as evidence of our ‘inhumanity’), our intelligence was always suspect when it was spoken of.

Black women in particular were cruelly and particularly ridiculed for lacking intelligence and therefore ‘humanity.’ For those who are not aware, Homo sapiens means “wise man,’ or “man of light.” The defining characteristic of human beings in the field of anthropology is our intelligence or cognitive capacity. Thus, without intelligence it is an easy progression to dehumanization for those deemed sub-human.

It was even casually bandied about that Black females simply lacked the capacity for any inner life at all. By extension, we were festishized (and still are) in the public imagination as edible items for consumption (the terms ebony, caramel and chocolate come readily to mind); dark-skinned collections of barely or rarely tamed animalistic, sexual and wild impulses.

Continuing in the vein of sexualization and fetishization, our orifices; our ‘holes,’ have been prized for everyone expect our selves. Our orifices are prized to birth men, to be penetrated at a man’s whim or to coo soothing phrases to everyone but ourselves and frequently not even for each other.

So, what of the inner life of a ‘n****r’ woman?

Generally, no one thinks too deeply (if at all), about the inner life of their donkey or broom; why should it be otherwise for us; as we were systemically dehumanized to the level of common chattel and property?

Who would have conceived of our intelligence under such horrific circumstances?

However, being the astute cynic and realistic optimist that I am, I find it difficult to believe that Europeans truly believed that Africans were incapable of intelligent thought. The truth was far more insidious-

It is precisely because Europeans were aware of our humanity and the challenge our humanity posed to inhumane and inequitable social systems that they feared the education would have on an oppressed person’s psychological well-being. Thus, a concerted effort was made to criminalize the education of enslaved people and propagate a narrative of Black intellect as non-existent and therefore the abuses heaped upon us as a people were justifiable due to our ‘subhuman’ nature.

Slave owners made no fuss of their chickens or pigs or horses learning how to read and write; so if Africans truly possessed no capacity for human intellect and the attendant challenge to inhumane systems such an intellect poses, then why resort to such depraved and immoral lengths to ensure slaves remained illiterate and therefore spiritually and mentally impoverished?

Like many aspects of life, the truth is contradictory – whites wished to maintain their beneficial racist social systems by propagating the myth of Black inferiority, meanwhile they forever remained vigilant against the possibilities for insurrection and the destruction of their systems of dominance that Black intelligence posed to a white supremacist social order.

Of course, there remains the looming possibility of Black impotence and caprice, which is the final weapon of a white supremacist society – to weaken and poison Black societies so that even if we are made aware of our fate intellectually, we posses little resources or power to fight our oppression; hence increasing our despair and hopelessness.

Which brings me to my original statement and intention in writing these reflections- Artificial Intelligence, and the moral and ethical dilemmas created by ‘artificial’ or simulated intelligence, can shed much light on some of our most intransigent and deeply rooted social problems; namely racism and the endurance of white supremacy globally.

The question of the role in which intelligence should play in our society has important ramifications for groups of people who have been historically excluded from Western conceptions of intelligence and therefore denied the fullness of their humanity.

So what of the inner lives of the descendants of those brought to the Americas and the Caribbean in bondage?
What of the human spark of those long denigrated as subhuman, and held as common chattel?
What of our hopes and dreams now?

And ultimately, what of the fact of our shared humanity; of which artificial intelligence supposedly threatens to absolve us of all easy, palatable answers? What of our shared human heritage is worth fighting for?

Welcome to the beautifully complex and challenging world of AI…

Shine on lovelies,
Melanie

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash