Exploring the significance of the Black radical tradition to modern-day liberation movements. . . . → Read More: Retaining Our Power and Reclaiming Histories of Resistance
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Cognitive dissonance is a term used to describe the experience of being incapable of reconciling inconsistent beliefs, thoughts, and attitudes. Best understood by example, cognitive dissonance can look something like this; a recent study by Harvard University shows that men who express the most homophobic sentiments are the same men who most easily experience homo-erotic attraction. The men mentioned above are a prime example of the process and effects of cognitive dissonance for two reasons; 1) these men are unwilling to accept their attractions to other men, which results in; 2) these men’s most exercised coping mechanism for dealing with their attractions toward other men is to express resentment toward men they believe to be gay. Sadly, the realities of cognitive dissonance play a larger part in the maintenance of systems of oppression than the previous example encapsulates. To this day, many people deny the fact that genocide committed against Indigenous people and the enslavement of African people has an effect on present day society. These people fail to take into consideration how African enslavement created the economic base which allowed the United States to accumulate vast stores of wealth, along with how Indigenous genocide allowed European colonizers access to previously inhabited lands. Some who deny the effects of this nation’s history on present day society may simply be lacking in information and critical thinking skills. Too often, however, many individuals remain attached to these beliefs, even when presented with data and logically solid arguments. Much has been written about how white people, men, and other people of privilege who claim to be committed to the work of justice, but are unwilling to accept criticisms of their own racism/misogyny/etc. These people are willing to acknowledge the fact of systemic injustice, to some extent, but are unwilling to include themselves within groups which wield power over others and refuse to accept criticisms of their own behavior. The cognitive dissonance here reveals itself in the way people in positions of power can speak about oppression and injustice, even criticize people they share identities with, while lacking the willingness to be critical of themselves. Often times, the urge to maintain beliefs grounded in faulty logic and fantasy compels the individual who has been challenged to shut down and/or lash out. Currently, I work at a non-profit that claims racial justice and restorative justice as two of its core pillars of work. At a work meeting this past summer, I got into a heated argument with a cisgendered, heterosexual white male colleague on the day same-sex marriage was legalized by the federal government. This colleague decided to bring up same-sex marriage as a pre-meeting topic of conversation, so I decided to openly share my perspective. While I was attempting to explain to him that same-sex marriage doesn’t do much for me as a Black, genderqueer person, and most other people in LGBQ and Trans communities, he continued to aggressively and condescendingly insist that my perspective was invalid. Halfway into the conversation, he began cutting me off when I pointed out that the mainstream gay movement is extremely exclusionary of people of color/trans people. Eventually, I left the table out of sheer frustration. Upon returning to the table, I decided to share with this colleague that his cutting me off was particularly triggering due to his whiteness and maleness, speaking to the ways in which white men often speak over people of color/women/femme people/other marginalized groups of people. He responded by saying this was “my sh*t”. His response revealed his refusal to accept that our identities had a role in our conflict. In a facilitated conversation with this same colleague, I told him, “I can show you data, statistics, theories…” to prove my point. The potential of being introduced to information that would challenge his worldview nearly caused his eyes to pop out of their sockets. My colleague’s cognitive dissonance was so ingrained that the mere thought of exposure to information that conflicted with his distorted sense of himself resulted in a visceral physical reaction. All of this from a man who routinely wears a T-shirt reading, “You’re my baby, no matter if you’re Black or white”… This behavior is a perfect example of what happens when “allyship” goes bad. Cognitive dissonance also manifests in the ways in which groups of people are represented in mass media; when referring to Black people who have engaged in criminal behavior, mass media often uses the label ‘thug’ while casually sharing details of allegedly dysfunctional . . . → Read More: Cognitive Dissonance and Its Political Repercussions 
Her voice is ethereal; haunting- it often bars me from sleep, leaving me staring wild-eyed into infinity and oblivion. Her croon conjures images of women from centuries past, gathering in sensual worship of the moon, shadows, stars, and all things umbra. For a self-proclaimed pop artist, Be Steady’s art exhumes a depth as vast and enveloping as an ocean. For a self-proclaimed pop artist, Be Steady’s art exhumes a depth as vast and enveloping as an ocean. Singer/songwriter filmmaker Be Steadwell shares her struggles and triumphs as an independent artist by This Light on Mixcloud Before I continue on about Be Steadwell’s art, I have a confession to make; I know Be personally. I met Be as an adrift adolescent, attempting to formulate a self in the realm of DC’s radical art and social justice scene. The first Be Steadwell performance I witnessed left me dazed- with a microphone, a looping machine, and her own voice, Be brought magic into the room. Afterward, I obtained a CD; the thought of endlessly have more of these sonically euphoric experiences was euphoric. Be gave me the CD for free, even though she was selling them for $5, or more, each. Which is to say, Be is nice. However, ‘nice’ has never made great art. Be Steady began recording music in the two-person group, The Lost Bois, with childhood friend Awkward Original (a.k.a A.O). According to the groups’ Bandcamp, A.O and Be sang in the same jazz band during their teen years. While in college, the two independently continued pursuing their musical passions and, upon returning to DC in the summer of 2009, the two began collaborating to “challenge the sexist, racist, and homophobic hot-mess that is mainstream music.”. The Lost Bois released an EP in the early summer of 2012 and, in it, one can clearly hear the earlier stages of what I would name Be Steadwell’s sonic signature; ethereal, eclectic, and layered- without pretension. The Lost Bois no longer seem to be collaborating as frequently anymore- music was last uploaded to their SoundCloud account four years ago. The Lost Bois are still “together” in some sense though, they had a 5-year anniversary concert this past April at the Potter’s House. However, Be has been consistently rising in her career as a solo artist- in music as well as film. Be’s art is complex, in form as well as content. From what I understand, Be produces, writes, and performs each of her musical pieces herself. Incorporating a wide variety of sounds, drop-ins, fall-outs, and other production sleight of hands- what would easily become ambitious and amateurish in the hands of a less talented and experienced producer, Be transforms into seamlessness and silk. In regards to content, Be often sings of love; in its various stages and manifestations. Love in murkiness and mess. Love unwanted and unrequited. Queer love between women. In her track Gilded Cage, Be sings about a relationship as pleasurable as it is stifling. Although Gilded Cage is an exemplary example of Be handling the content of her work with complexity, it is by no means an aberration. One of Be’s most recent releases, Black Girls Who Can’t Dance, was intentionally created to convey a more nuanced portrayal of Black woman- a representation rarely often seen in media- independent and mainstream. In Be’s work, we are allowed an intimacy that is as alluring as it is astonishing. Unlike many other independent artists, Be doesn’t seek to construct a persona behind cheap aesthetics and pretension- instead, she lets us in, without betraying her mysteriousness and privacy. Now an artist-in-residence at the Strathmore in Strathmore, MD, Be is steadily expanding her career. Two or three years ago, a QWoC friend of mine posted lyrics from one of Be’s songs in a Facebook status. Initially, I was shocked to know that this friend, who lives in California, had ever heard of Be. However, this friend nonchalantly replied that Be is quite well-known across the United States, especially in QPoC circles. In the time since this Facebook exchange, Be has been on tour across the country- performing her music live, as well as screening her film, Vow of Silence, which has been screened on 4 continents, over 10 countries, and close to 25 cities to date. Before long, Be will be touring her music internationally, and haunting other Queer folks of color across the globe with her . . . → Read More: Be Steadwell: A Voice Not To Be Missed  Comments are closed  Art & Culture  Be Steadwell, Lost Bois, Malik Thompson, This Light: Sounds for Social Change 
“…there is not a great American city from New York to Cleveland or Detroit, from Washington, the nation’s capital, to Chicago, from Memphis to Atlanta or Birmingham, form New Orleans to Los Angeles, that is not disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent Negroes.” – We Charge Genocide (1951) On December 3rd of 2014, Daniel Pantaleo, the white NYPD officer responsible for the murder of Eric Garner, a middle-aged Black male resident of NYC, was not indicted for Garner’s murder by a grand jury overseeing the proceedings of the case. Given the recent history of massive protests in opposition to police brutality and anti-Black violence across the country, a wave of protests decrying the grand jury’s decision was inevitable. Mere weeks after the Wilson verdict, in which Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson was cleared of all charges in the killing of unarmed Black teen Michael Brown, the Pantaleo verdict created even more distress in the hearts of people across the country fighting for the end of police violence and recognition, in both thought and action, of the value of Black lives. Despite the attention given to present-day police violence in Black communities, the mass murder of Black people, both by vigilantes and those employed by the state, is not a new phenomena in the United States. However, modern day killings of Black people have been said to surpass those which took place in the South during the era of racial apartheid. Due in large part to the accessibility of information in today’s world, thanks to social media websites such as Twitter, people across the country, and even the globe, are showing solidarity to activists on the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement. This said, before the Black Lives Matter movement shifted a broader lens on the issue of police violence in Black communities, two organizations, the Stolen Lives Project and the October 22 Coalition, have been active in challenging anti-Black police violence for decades. The Stolen Lives Project, whose mission, as quoted from their website, is “to assemble a national list of people killed by law enforcement agents from 1990 to the present.”, has documented over two-thousand cases of people killed by police officers, publishing this information in a book in 1999. While acknowledging the fact that the two-thousand cases they’ve documented are a small fraction of the number of people killed by police officers, the goals of the project are twofold; to maintain evidence of the epidemic of extrajudicial killings in the United States, and to preserve the dignity of those whose deaths would have been swept beneath the rug to maintain the myth of a policing system untainted by corruption. Active since 1966, the October 22 Coalition began as the brainchild of various people engaged in radical politics during the 60’s. Working in tandem with the Stolen Lives Project, the Coalition helps organize those seeking to take part in the National Day of Protest. A mass database of resources and points of contact for those wanting to get involved in protest against police violence, the Coalition seeks to bring together “those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality.”. As exemplified by two organizations mentioned above, police violence in Black communities is not a new occurrence; however, neither is resistance. With Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington, DC interrupting lunches on Capitol Hill by staging ‘die-ins‘, time will only tell if we’re entering a new stage of the Black Lives Matter movement, one where those who aren’t living in military-police occupied zones, such as Ferguson, are willing to push the nation’s political big shots on their willingness to take action to cease the terrorism afflicting Black lives. Comments are closed Justice System, Police Brutality Black Lives Matter, Malik Thompson, October 22 Coalition, Stolen Lives Project 
I wrote this essay in response to liberal notions of nonviolence, which tend to be irritatingly sentimental and shallow. In the wake of this nation’s imprisonment system’s failure to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Panteleo, the two police officers responsible for the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, much debate has been sparked about the nature of the rebellions, both peaceful and retaliatory, which have taken place across the country. Although not written in response to this particular series of tragedies, I believe the insights I offer in this piece shed light upon the necessity of transforming systemic manifestations of violence rather than condemning those groups and individuals who choose retaliatory tactics in response to the brutality they, and their community members, are subjected to. Protest in Ferguson… There is a force in our society, one that has come to manifest itself in countless forms, that many people are hesitant to name as a detriment to their lives. Most who dare to speak against this force, to utter the word that names it, are waved away as sentimental dunces, are charged with promoting lofty idealisms and are thereafter banished to society’s dim margins. Very few wish to acknowledge the hideous commonness of this force in its many manifestations. That force’s name, that persistent presence, that scourge of pain, and fear, and shame, is ‘violence’. When most people hear the word ‘violence’, memories of physical brutality may replay in their minds. A vicious swat by an older sibling, a sailing fist cracked across a jaw, a bloodcurdling assault by an anonymous assailant. Although many are quick to decry the most intimate aspects of physical violence where it rears its head, the majority of those are also unwilling, or incapable, to enact healing work against those lingering traumas associated with having one’s body ravaged at another’s hands. Of course, they themselves are not to blame. Ours is a society that seeks to, at every turn, devalue the significance of its citizens interior lives. We are encouraged to neglect our inner lives; religious practices are derided as narrow-minded and uncouth within increasingly secularizing cultural spheres, those who seek out therapists are snickered at in secret, and all who deeply ponder about human nature are handled with suspicion and apprehension. For most people, extended silences and solitude allow sinister things to bubble up to their conscious, and no one has taught them to be at peace with these haunts. Too many flee their demons by embracing addictions. Too many lack skills that would disallow past traumas to rend their spirits. Too many have been coaxed into allowing their interior lives to decay. Yet, the state of people’s interior lives can never be divorced from the surrounding sociopolitical and sociocultural environments in which they’ve developed. Is it not violence when ours is a society that devalues the humanity of female-bodied people to no more than their sexual organs, their bodies violated time and time again, their appeals for justice ignored just as often? When young children, of all colors, point to dolls of darker skin and Afro-features as inherently nefarious? When indigenous voices of various tones seeking sovereignty over ancestral lands are constantly ignored and, instead, have the miniscule wedges of Earth they’ve been murdered onto bombarded with toxic wastes? When people of all races lacking in economic resources must either subsist on foodstuffs that poison their bodies, or nothing? What world do we inhabit where these realities often go acknowledged and, yet, unmanaged; where the suffering of another is commonly associated with a character flaw on the individual’s part and not symptomatic of systems of domination our society was built, and tragically thrives, upon? Any path toward nonviolence that fails to acknowledge and work against physical, non-physical, and structural manifestations of violence is inherently lacking in depth. Any paths toward nonviolence lacking in strategies for justice and healing are underdeveloped. We are past the era where the division between mind, body, and spirit can be justifiably imposed upon the masses. We are past the point of presenting the populace with sparkling words in hopes that they will suffice for the arduous labor of transforming our world into one where harmony reigns. Comprehensive nonviolent ideologies must offer tactics and solutions to address the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of evil, blatant and insidious. Nonviolence is only authentic when the livelihoods of all persons are accounted for, when voices resounding at the margins become centered and their requests heeded. Ultimately, the . . . → Read More: On Nonviolence One comment - (Comments are closed) Issues, Justice System, Prison Industrial Complex, Racial Profiling Ferguson, Garner, Malik Thompson, Michael Brown, nonviolence, police killings |
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