21st Century African American Women

"I think there's something very special about women writers, black women writers in America and those that I know of in any real sense in Africa-Bessie Head, for example, in Africa or Gloria Naylor here. There's a gaze that women writers seem to have that is quite fascinating to me because they tend not to be interested in confrontations with white men-the confrontation between black women and white men is not very important, it doesn't center the text. There are more important ones for them and their look, their gaze of the text is unblinking and wide and very steady. It's not narrow, it's very probing and it does not flinch. And it doesn't have these funny little axes to grind. There's something really marvelous about that."

"There is no way you can say that realism is the only literature going. I mean, most of our best novelists are not even writing realism a writers like Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Leslie Silko. They are using realistic techniques to tell stories that are not realistic."

"Perhaps of the books that we were reading, the one that really stands out the most about the American dream is The Street (by Ann Petry)."

"When I think of the American dream, that’s what I think of something that is manufactured, something that is ethereal, something that’s not quite there yet."

"If you can just first maintain your own humanity, reify your own personal worth. You then flow into the system as an entity."

"When I think of the American dream, I think of exclusivity, to be quite honest with you. I think that dream, just like the Foundation of America, was only held out to a few and it was only met for a few. You know, it was not for the most part, for those who had come from Europe, who were land owners, who were part of the aristocracy, who had helped to them the promise that they could indeed prosper in this country. The Constitution was not intended for people who were landless, for people who were not male, for people who were not white. You know, this country was just simply not founded that way. We had to have amendments in order to make this democracy more and more inclusive. And so with the American dream as well, it was held out to those who were white, to those who were male for the most part, and others had to fight for inclusion in it."

"It wasn’t even nothing personal. I left the group when I was 21. They were my manager, my producers, my label. Also, I was just young. I was on a spiritual journey. At the time, I thought it was religion."

"cI been watching them girls for the past couple of years and I was like, ‘What the f**k?’ It made me feel good, they represented Memphis right. It’s only been me and [La] Chat that came out of Memphis,” she said. “A year later, GloRilla got signed. I got distracted because I was thinking of her glow-up. I think she was 19, remember when [I] was that age?"

"To me, the great writers who come from ethnic minorities writing in English come from America. I think the deep, the real deep thinkers now writing in the English language are the black women, such as Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Alice Walker, etc. (F.J.: Where they are using black English in a certain kind of way to signify their difference?) Emecheta: Exactly. You must read Naylor's Mama Day, because she's a modern Zora Neale Hurston. She uses language when it comes to conversation that is not like anything else. So there's an amalgam of the old and the new, and it's beautifully written, the way she's written it. She's a child of today, so she knows what she's talking about."

"There are some young Black women, however, that I particularly want to talk about, younger than I in any case, young Black women who are writing, who are inspirational to me. For example, a group of young women in Atlanta have a magazine called Sage. I'm impressed with Gloria Naylor's continuing to work. I'm impressed certainly with Alice Walker. I was hopeful and am still hopeful of Alyse Sutherland who wrote a book many years ago called Let the Lion Eat Straw. A wonderful book. Lucille Clifton and Carolyn Rogers and those younger Black women who have not become well known. That they continue to struggle and write is inspirational."

"That’s what the Depression kind of showed, that hard work guaranteed you nothing."

"They are acceptable. The Colin Powells of America. It was such a phenomenon to me, that Colin Powell was so deeply loved by the American media and actually tabbed as becoming president. And when you look back at the man, you sort of understood what could be more American than someone who was willing to die for this country. You know, then then a man who was a general, then a man who was that conservative, you know, a man who was also fair skinned, which was extremely important and who had Republican leanings."

"All of the emphasis on the firsts, of the diversity of this crew, but less emphasis on whether or not these individuals represent the interests of the group that they are assumed to represent because of what they look like, right?"

"If you spend your time saying "it can never happen" while occupying a position to make it more likely to happen, you're part of the problem."

"6 ppl hold > wealth than the bottom 50% of America. There's more wealth inequality today than any time since the gilded age. Biden accepted the most billionaire $ in the primary. They're paying him to reject MedicareForAll in a pandemic. Imagine not being mad at billionaires."

"And so there’s a great deal of frustration that there is this choice not only to nominate a candidate who is known as the author of what is actually called the Joe Biden crime bill, but that he’s gone and also selected a running mate who is known for being the top cop from California, the state that has the second-highest number of incarcerated people in America. And moreover, Kamala Harris is someone who has had these criticisms leveraged at her throughout, very early on, at the start of her campaign, and, to many people in the activist community, has done very little to assuage people’s concerns about her previous stances or to demonstrate the level of growth that we would like to see."

"We are in the middle of the largest protest movement in American history. And it’s a protest movement that’s all about finding nonpunitive, noncarceral solutions to the kinds of economic problems that are plaguing disproportionately Black and Brown communities, but all Americans, especially right now in the middle of this additionally historic global pandemic."

"It's hard to define "progressive" but it seems to me you shouldn't label yourself as such if you don't think that decent housing and healthcare and food etc are human rights."

"With respect to the Democratic National Convention, you know, I think the party is sending a very clear signal about whose votes they are reaching for and whose they aren’t. They have John Kasich, who is a Republican and who has attempted to pass some of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the state of Ohio, in a prime spot, when there was news for a while that suggested that they weren’t even going to allow AOC to speak. Of course, they now have. But they have made gestures like barring The Young Turks, one of the preeminent lefty news organizations, from having a press pass to a digital event. Why you would do that, other than to send a kind of signal to progressives that you’re not interested in their vote, I don’t know. So, it’s a really curious choice. It feels again like it’s 2016, and there is a dynamic being set up where there is a kind of wanton disregard for the values and interests of what is coming up to be the new base, the insurgent left wing of the party, the part of the party that just celebrated the victory of Cori Bush last week and Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones. And it is telling that the only people under the age of 40 — under the age of 50, rather, who are speaking at this event are AOC and Pete Buttigieg."

"There has been an implication, online at the very least, that the people who have raised concerns about Kamala Harris and her record are not the base, are not Black people, are white leftists. The “Bernie bro” mythology has been raised as a specter again, when the reality is there’s a lot of grassroots frustration with the fact that this, again, unprecedented political movement is basically being ignored, or at very least a nose is being thumbed at what’s going on in the streets right now."

"Joe Biden has articulated very clearly that he is the candidate who promises that nothing will fundamentally change."

"In a world where student loan debt, especially in the course of the primary, was still being characterized by the overwhelming bulk of Democratic Party candidates as something that was a far-left, inappropriate policy to pursue, and which, even in the context of Joe Biden, is still being framed as something that should be pushed in a very minimalist way — right? — he has the power to cancel all student debt on day one but is talking about canceling a maximum $10,000; Chuck Schumer, some others are pushing for more — I’m not overly optimistic that this policy, which is one of few that Biden has control over, is going to be dealt with in the maximalist way that the crisis compels."

"What you’ve seen in this latest slate of picks is a lot of emphasis on the identity of the individuals picked, a lot of firsts in the group. And even folks with less — or less, shall we say, more attenuated relationships to traditional identity characters have gone as far as to talk about the struggles of their stepfather’s family, right? And I think that’s very intentional, because substantively several of these individuals have real problems, and none of them truly represents a progressive in the mindset of most Americans, especially those who identified with Bernie Sanders. And Neera Tanden is someone, in particular, who was very notorious for being openly antagonistic of Senator Sanders, who, again, represented the largest coalition of progressive voters in this country"

"one of my teachers around this is a writer and a thinker named Mariame Kaba, and she’s an exquisite human being, exquisite thinker. And one of the things that she often reminds me of — because I think what would be so comforting to us is if we could be like, We’re going to end the prison system and automatically move to a very well-organized, centralized system where instead of everyone going to prison, you just go straight to a mediator and it’s all handled. And she’s like, It won’t be a huge, overarching, centralized system. Transformative justice will be a lot of us learning the skills to hold conflict within our communities, within our families, within our schools and institutions. We’re learning, ourselves, to hold it in different ways."

"Remember, the systems live within us (referring to the words of Morgan Bassichis). The punishment mindset is very hard to get out of. And it's normal and healthy often to want vengeance against people for causing you great harm. That's not going to get addressed in an accountability process. If you are the one who is rushing after that and that's really what you're seeking, an accountability process really would not help. You're always going to be feeling as though it's "not working" because it's not doing the thing that you really would like."

"Failure and mistakes are part of a process."

"Going into processes, if you go into it with an idea that the person you're working with is a fragile China doll who is going to crack under any pressure, you can't make a mistake-well, then you're already set up for failure, in the sense of potential catastrophic hurt. Start off with the notion that our process allows for survivors to reclaim agency. That's what you're working toward. The binary of success/failure, get rid of that. That's important, number one."

"With punishment at the center of everything we haven't been able to really address the other stuff that needs to happen. Because people fucking need to-they need to take accountability when they harm people."

"Some people may ask, "Does this mean that I can never call the cops if my life is in serious danger?" Abolition does not center that question. Instead, abolition challenges us to ask "Why do we have no other well-resourced options?" and pushes us to creatively consider how we can grow, build, and try other avenues to reduce harm. Repeated attempts to improve the sole option offered by the state, despite how consistently corrupt and injurious it has proven itself, will neither reduce nor address the harm that actually required the call. We need more and effective options for the greatest number of people."

"Let's begin our abolitionist journey not with the question "What do we have now, and how can we make it better?" Instead, let's ask, "What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?" If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us."

"I was struck again by the importance of language and of words that need to be spoken. Our best teachers, including Audre Lorde among others, have imparted this truth. In the last few months, weeks, and days, I have found myself saying #BlackLivesMatter out loud at various times. It's not that I don't already know that they do. I think that I am trying to speak the words into existence. These words should be taken for granted. They are not. I've revised my previous belief that the words should remain unspoken. "Who are they trying to convince?" I'd previously confided to a friend. It turns out that I owe a debt of gratitude to Opal, Patrisse, and Alicia for reminding me of the power of language and the spoken word."

"I have so many touchstones. I believe in touchstones, people you go back to in particular moments when you need something. I turn to Baldwin a lot. I read him when I'm feeling a sense of despair over the world that I'm in. I find a sentence that he wrote and it's like, "Ooh, yes." I think about so many of the Black communist and socialist women of the first part of the century. If they could go through what they went through, if Marvel Cooke could survive the Red Scare and being fired by the Amsterdam News-she was the first woman working there ever-if she can endure that in the 1930s, what am I doing? You know what I mean? Now I have so much more at my disposal. I'm so much less oppressed. I love Ida B. Wells-Barnett. I love reading her journal where she's lamenting that she can't stop spending money, like, "Why did I buy that scarf? My God. Why am I spending this money?" And it's beautiful, because it shows you this woman who fearlessly went to the South by herself to literally take down people's testimony after a lynching, just sitting around saying, "Why can't I fucking stop shopping? Why did I buy this super expensive scarf that I cannot afford?" It makes me so happy to go back to that and read that passage and be like, "Yes, Ida!"...Angela Davis is a huge touchstone for me. Ruthie Wilson Gilmore is a touchstone for me. Beth Richie is a touchstone for me. A lot of Black feminist women who I've been able to be in space with in real life. Some who've given me a way of being in the world."

"June Jordan, who has been a touchstone of mine, really, since I first read her work in college, which was many, many years ago. So I really can't believe that I'm here today, and I'm really grateful to be here with all of you to celebrate her legacy and her life. June Jordan loved Black people, and so do I. She was an educator, and so am I. She was an activist; so am I. She was an internationalist, and so am I. She was a brilliant writer, and I am not-at all...She insisted that by organizing, we have the power to overcome oppression. I too believe this to be true."

"I think, really, the reason why the book has been resonating is because of the uprisings and the struggle in the streets, the fact that so many people around the country recognize the complete and utter failures and limits of so-called reform to actually do what people want, which is to have some little modicum of justice. So, I think people are impatient with incrementalism and are impatient with solutions that don’t actually address the root causes of violence. And part of that is the fact that, you know, policing is inherently violent and that the starting point has to be to actually reduce people’s contact with the police altogether. And I always tell people, if you care about the violence of policing, then you should want as little policing as possible in any form."

"I always tell people that when we talk about prison-industrial complex abolition, we’re talking about a dual project. We’re talking about, on the one hand, a project that is about dismantling death-making institutions, like policing and prisons and surveillance, and creating life-affirming ones, putting resources and investing in the things we know do keep people safe — housing, healthcare, schooling, all kinds of other things, you know, living wages. You just talked with Reverend Barber earlier. Those types of investments are what really actually keep people safe. So, that’s what PIC abolition is really about at its core."

"I also keep thinking about the cruel irony of naming a bill after — a police reform, supposedly, bill, after someone who was killed by the police, and then to include a whole set of so-called procedural reforms that would not have prevented that person’s death. So, you know, this particular offering that they’re making, supposedly, in Congress wouldn’t have kept George Floyd alive. And I think that’s just cruel irony."

"That’s a chant that has been ringing out in the streets ever since 2014 in Ferguson and in New York and all around the country. I’ve seen and heard, when I was in the streets with young people at protests, young people in Chicago screaming that chant."

"Mariame Kaba has given incredible talks about this, that we've had 250 years of this well-funded prison system experiment. And it hasn't stopped rape. It hasn't stopped robberies. It hasn't stopped drugs. It hasn't stopped anything at all. All of those things that we think of as harm, they continue without the responses they need...One of the other things that Mariame points out—what would it look like if the experiment of transformative justice was as well funded as the experiment of prison? We have no idea what things could look like at scale because we've never actually had the resources to even experiment at any kind of scale. We’ve had to argue over every penny."

"Change requires collaboration and coalition, even (especially) uncomfortable coalition. Mariame Kaba, a longtime prison abolitionist who has done as much as anyone to imagine what it would take to live in a world that does not equate safety with police and cages, puts the lesson succinctly, one passed on to her by her father: "Everything worthwhile is done with other people.""

"why has Mariame written so much if she detests writing? And when it's often but not always done solo? In addition to writing that advances organizations and writing to support campaigns, Mariame is practicing what she preaches to fellow organizers: document your work and write your self into the record. Mariame encourages organizers to do so, despite any attention given to them by journalists, pundits, and academics, as many from the outside might not get it right. In doing so, Mariame has joined a publishing history of Black women organizers and activists who wrote themselves into the archives, including Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells-Barnett."

"In now famous words, prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba tells us that "hope is a discipline.""

"some of the leading abolitionists in the United States and around the world today are people like Mariame Kaba and Andrea Smith and Kelly Gillespie and others, who came out of work against domestic violence — i.e. it was in doing work to try to fight against violence and harm, that they realized abolition was the only way to resolve the problems that were not being resolved by having better, faster, more swift and sure punishment when somebody harmed somebody else."

"Poetry can help lift the ceiling from our brains so that we can imagine liberation."

"How do we mourn? How can we grieve? I think poetry opens a door. Poetry helps us to resist."

"Poetry helps me to imagine freedom."

"I think one of the most important parts about mutual aid has to do with changing the social relationships that we have amongst each other, in order to be able to fight beyond this current moment, beyond the current crisis, beyond the current form of a disaster that we’re trying to overcome. And so, one of the beautiful aspects is that you really don’t know where the connections are going to take you. You’re going to make and build new relationships that will kind of lead to new projects and will lead to new understandings, that will shape the potential future of, you know, your community and beyond."

"Black Americans are residents of a settler colony, not truly citizens of the United States. Despite a constitution laden with European Enlightenment values and a document of independence declaring certain inalienable rights, Black existence was legally that of private property until postbellum emancipation. The Black American condition today is an evolved condition directly connected to this history of slavery, and that will continue to be the case as long as the United States remains as an ongoing settler project. Nothing short of a complete dismantling of the American state as it presently exists can or will disrupt this."

"The fact that sexual violence is so incredibly pervasive should tell us that it's not a story of individual monsters. We have got to think about this in a more complex way if we're really going to uproot forms of sexual violence."

"I have been thinking a lot about #MeToo and thinking, What if we look at it as something that is not done to "bad people?" What if it is actually a way to understand the ways that various forms of violence actually shape our lives? If we could see it as a way to understand how deeply enmeshed we are in the very systems that we're organizing to transform, then I feel like it's a movement that will allow us to move a step toward transformation and more justice."

"I think we’re going to have to be much more creative in the way that we address issues. I tend to be skeptical of gun control, in general. I see it often as a way to criminalize communities of color further."