Racism is comprised of countless facets. Facets of oppression, power, controlled infrastructure, restricted and limited opportunities and resources. Protesting against all its abhorrent angles is also dimensional. As we witness an unsettling, hideous history unfold in all of its cacophony of confusion and brutality, it's evident that the display of resistance and solidarity isn't a one-size fits all, and that accentuating all the positives becomes key in a time of crisis and division.
Toni Morrison notes in her excellent essay "Peril" (from 2019's The Source of Self-Regard) that there are three human responses to the perception of chaos: naming, violence, and stillness. The latter is not to be confused with passivity, but the stillness in art, in the creation of. Being a writer, I'm aware of the power the pen and keystrokes posses, but the reading of such words is just as potent and proactive as taking to the streets to raise fists skyward.
Reading --- of books, of newspapers, of websites, specifically --- allows us to respond with stillness. To sit, absorb, and apply words for tangible thought. No comment boxes, no click-bait headlines, just you and lines and lines of words, words that cultivate ideas, histories, and worlds. Flip pages, scroll, swipe left, and curiosity and knowledge are ignited. Reading is an constant ignition switch for knowledge and for change. Its why autocratic governments despise and dispel the practice of reading and spreading information, why the free press and free speech are often the first causes of contention as these practices derail their game plans for systematic oppression and controlled conformity. The ol' 'you speak what I say you should speak, you act as how I say you should act'. Once you find different ways to speak, its difficult to fall in a singular line.
It isn't lost on me how my ancestors, slaves, were barred from and were brutalized for reading, and acquiring an education. It was nothing short of a crime to even posses a book, much less write one. The methodical execution of racist laws, the instillation of fear of the written word was all to hinder generations of being educated and aware of their existence. The effort was to have them "not exist", to erase them as a culture, as a people, all to maintain one kind of supreme racial, social, and economic control. Placing books in the hands of slaves was a defiance to their captivity. Books signified freedom. Reading a book taught one how to learn and say words, and use them to free and reclaim themselves.
As the decades go on, where the 19th Century still bleeds into the 21st Century, interest in the preservation and practice of reading in the United States has dwindled. America (in muddled fashion) "elected" a treasonous, bigoted bunker-dwelling creature of ill-intelligence to reinforce such a decline, almost as a chest-thump affirmation for ignorance and illiteracy. It used to be shameful to say you couldn't read, now it's a source of some weird alter-pride where the abuse of words, the abuse of books, even sacred texts, using them as (upside down) props for nefarious and narcissistic gains is almost lauded. You'd raise eyebrows over some of the individuals I've come across who've proudly told me they don't read, never liked reading, or find it a "boring intrusion". A surprising number of them proclaimed they wanted to --- get this --- write books. Stephen King has some things to say about that dizzy contradiction (see point #8).
Reading, books, language, writing --- these are treasures to be persevered and practiced, used as mechanisms of human connection, survival, and resistance. Now more than ever we need to engage in reading, in the creation and stillness of art. This to comprehend and understand where we're coming from --- and where we're going to. Reading has been the one thing to keep my head above the swill of raging waters as a pandemic persists, political chaos commences, revolutions are televised, and America addresses for the umpteenth time its original sins of racism, and the denial and unjust extermination of Black lives.
Reading, writing, and creation --- these are my contributions that maintain my existence as a Black woman in America. It's my response, my protest, my resistance towards the powers, and the ills that be.
...and yet we all must be thoughtful what we read and consume in this time of turbulence. Amid chaotic uncertainty, where a lot of words, ideas and opinions are thrown around, the challenge is to carve clarity and positive productivity from them. Thus, read widely and diversely. Read authors of different races, genders, sexualities, from variant cultures, religions, and regions. Read fiction. Read non-fiction. Read what speaks to you, read what speaks up for you. Read to practice self-care. Read out of your comfort zone. Read to be aware of where you stand in these moments, in this life.
Stay safe. Stay informed. Stay protesting. Stay reading.
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