Tell a revolution: – I must comment on this amazing, transformative moment we are in: Black Lives Matter has opened up a space for us! A suppressed space, unheard, unspoken, unwanted, neglected too often.
There was the power of the black square, then I put the black frame on. Now at last it emerges more widely and more publicly (once again since the civil rights movement) what had to be brought to attention: inequality, some of the conditions of blackness.
This too gives rise to the space between black and white. Where is the line between us, and why draw it? Why has it been drawn anyway? It’s very much like asking: why slavery, why colonialism? Why have we been divided?
And then there is the amnesia, or the denial about these events, the lack of understanding about the trauma these events lay upon us as a society, which divides us further.
Now is a time when we could all become aware.
There’s a space that speaks a thousand volumes. Other things come into that space which complicates the space, before we can get rid of it as a vacuum. Fill it with understanding, fill it with stories we have to tell.
Can this be the answer, to tell more stories against inequality, mere stories against colonialism? At least it’s a starting point, from which we might be able to go all the way, not just half way. Speak a revolution each, and then it happens!
Black and White, Blackness and Whiteness, where are our spaces and how many are there – and what’s between us? Maybe we realise that we don’t want a space which is to do with our colour. So let’s go deeper! Let all of us take any space!
How can we grow together without being torn apart over and over again by unequal treatment?
The Black Struggle is so meaningful because it’s always been at the vanguard in showing the way for emancipation and equality on so many levels. It accounts, for example, for the historical dimension, and shows how an economic system had been set up in a way that produces inequality on a structural level. There is a lot in there, dynamics of disadvantage which are problematic not just on one level but on many different levels. Therefore we have all benefited from the black struggle, this is my contention. Let’s go on. I don’t mean let’s move on but let’s go on. Let us go deeper, until all of us understand more.
So this is to be continued. Let’s take our stories out, let’s go for an equality walk and say: Black Lives Matter, to all of us, equally.
( please see also ‘It’s Lit with PHDJ’ for my contribution on the wider context: https://itslitwithphdj.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/ep-120-write-now-writing-for-radical-futures-in-support-of-black-lives-second-installment/)
ColourCirclesite 