The Lost Causes of “Learning”

Imagine waking up to the sound of a five-year-old screaming and breaking dishes in the kitchen. Startled out of sleep, the parent rushes down to the kitchen and demands to know why the child is behaving so. When caught, the child starts crying, and says, “I’m learning!” while hurling another dish against the wall. The parent tries to scold the child, immediately rushes to put on shoes, and tries to find and hide other dishes, only to discover that the child has systematically gone through the house to bring dishes into the kitchen to break. Soon, the tears disappear, and the child becomes gleeful again, watching and causing the destruction with reckless abandon. After another hour, there are no more dishes to break, and the parent sits down at the kitchen table, only to be jarred by the child’s demand for cuddling. The parent looks down in the child in disbelief, but the child emphatically commands that the parent cuddle to restore the relationship. All in all, there is no better violation than to expect comfort, forgiveness, and unity after causing reckless destruction.

The biggest challenge in racial justice, for all who work towards it, is the expectation that so many people have that there will never be any real progress, just “baby steps.” That is offensive on numerous levels, not least of which that the behavior continues while the negotiations are still happening. Did urban renewal stop while the Fair Housing Act was being completed? Did school stop while the lawyers were in court fighting for Brown vs. Board? Did the price of everything decrease after the deaths of over five million people? Did rents stop being raised during the global pandemic, and did a congressperson avoid camping on the Capitol steps just to keep psychopaths from kicking out families? None of that merciless behavior stopped, yet people expect all workers to continue doing IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) work regardless of the abysmal record of justice within the dominant narrative.

On the bright side, society is finally waking up as a whole to the reality that people enjoy being racist, and relish the ease that pervades their lives. Last year, George Floyd was actually the final straw to people being disgusted with the lackadaisical care afforded to Black people in the United States; after all, when people can be killed because their front door is open, running for their health, and while sleeping, everyone can see that the “fear” is a lie. Protests erupted, although the press had to call them “riots” to give insurance companies the excuse to avoid paying all the businesses destroyed by those who “forgot” the purpose of the protests. After that, there were multiple publicity stunts that allowed people to gain a lot of attention that helped purportedly “good” people get into office — I would also remind you that the most offensive part about Kirsten Cinema is that she tweeted some nonsense, and people said, “That’s the one.” A year after all the attention-seeking behavior, it has finally become clear that there was no true intention of addressing racial justice in substantive ways, and all the cosmetic smokescreens have been seen for the lies they have always been. Discriminatory behavior continues, and everyone expects all BIPOCQ to still “come together” after getting away with lying to us yet again.

In fact, the responses have always been the same when daring to hold the dominant narrative for the pain it causes. Black people can sing along with all the coercive, manipulative, and deceitful tricks that people use as stall tactics: “We’re learning!” “It’s so important that we’re having this conversation!” “Thank you for your story!” Performance art, songs, and murals are apparently all anyone can expect within the last Eurocentric empire, and somehow, folks are shocked that we will no longer accept such paltry offerings for pain. Folks need to learn not to go into other folks’ neighborhoods, decide they want something better, and bulldoze out the people they find undesirable? “Conversations” are important while Black women remain the most educated demographic and the least paid? Folks think that “thanking people” for “stories” matter more than reparations? First of all, what does that say about the people who are desperate to continue using those excuses? What kind of monsters need to “learn” that people will eventually avoid those who keep hurting others with no provocation? I mean, why else does anyone think that only 3% of Black people ever want to return to an office?

It took a pandemic to see what BIPOCQ have been explaining in various ways for centuries: work in the United States is exploitative, no one cares if poor people die, and people feel entitled to treat others badly for no reason other than their whims. Violence is not only caused with blood loss, and abusers are frequently more psychologically depraved than they are physically violent; otherwise, there would be no stigma against mental health. For example, many will argue that displacement is just “the market,” but people with intelligence will observe that “the market” often only seems to include quiet, skinny, rich, young white people — leaving everyone else to needlessly suffer. The dominant narrative usually puts waste and power storage in BIPOCQ communities, so are people arguing that cancer is “nonviolent”? Instead of acknowledging that the system is corrupt and wrong, folks are still talking about the books they read and how everyone needs to vote. It remains unclear why so many people think that anyone asked them to get a PhD in the Tuesday of a BIPOCQ instead of substantively changing behavior, or why they are obsessed with leaders who have demonstrated — not discussed, demonstrated — so much corruption that we keep seeing stories about bad behavior everywhere, including the abominable wealth earned by public servants who swore responsibility to us. Now that people seem to have stopped willfully misunderstanding us — I never underestimate people who will lie for their own comfort — we had Striketober, the Great Resignation, and people are finally simply saying, “No.” It sure would have been nice if they had been willing to do this before we only had eight years to substantively change global behavior. Got news for everyone: the planet cares nothing for election cycles and “unity,” so good luck with that.

Finally, everyone expects BIPOCQ to keep enduring for the sake of comfort while still being forced to compete in the same way. “Even though we refuse to promote you, you’re so vital to the team, so don’t quit.” “True, nobody stands up when you’re being publicly berated and mocked, but you speak so well!” “I love your smile as I drive to my dozens of properties that the banks were happy to sell me, regardless of my dubious financial behavior!” If that sounds psychotic, congratulations on retaining some level of humanity. I live in Texas, the state that banned abortions but forcibly sterilizes migrants, in Austin where Elon Musk owns most of the property and the mayor — who has also worked as an eminent domain attorney taking property from BIPOCQ — went to Cabo San Lucas during the health crisis. Yet how many people gaze on Austin with rapture? Most of the dwindling population of BIPOCQ are beginning to wonder if people love it so much because they almost never have to look at us, and I think we might be on to something. While processing that, also consider that Portland is a sister city to Austin, and many BIPOCQ in Portland will report the same experience. The image I have of people’s expectations of BIPOCQ is of the Rockettes in blackface singing for us to just keep waiting — apt, since the first Black Rockette occurred in 1987, but the Rockettes started dancing in 1925.

Learning how to be a better person is something that people need to start doing on their own time, instead of feeling entitled to force others to wait until they have the capacity to share. The beginning relationship between the global north and the global south was never as wholesome as that of a parent and child, despite whatever delusional people need folks to believe. Most narcissistic relationships involve “lovebombing,” or excessive effort to believe a positive false front that coincides with people’s deeply held beliefs. The dominant narrative, however, was immediately destructive and harmful, which is why nostalgia never really works with us. Anyone who understands history, regardless of the continent, never has a vision of the “good ol’ days,” and we are quickly distancing ourselves from those who are choosing to pretend that there was any real equilibrium. If people want to prop up dysfunction that they feel should be palatable to those it harms, there is nothing to be done for or with those people. Most people forget that ultimately, activists are people, too. We are autonomous agents who can examine situations and recognize whether the other parties are acting in good faith. When people coerce, lie, and manipulate while not following through on their parts, we are allowed to stop fighting for the collaboration and stay away from those people.

I often try to include solutions, but there is one huge elephant in the room that nobody is acknowledging: everyone is responsible for their own behavior, and telling BIPOCQ that we have to be nice while telling folks not to bully our children into suicide is what monsters do, not people. Therefore, the first solution is to acknowledge that if behavior, policy, and consequences are going to remain the same, people have no right to expect BIPOCQ to keep “working with them.” In March, I started working with a team of about thirty people, which has now dwindled down to eighteen and dropping, and this team was paid (about one month’s rent, for all the creeps who think that any BIPOCQ are getting rich from this struggle). I myself have just given notice with some other teams that have been shown to belittle and tone-police me to the point of being wasteful of my time. People have shown their hands, and highways of murals and blocks of galleries are not going to change that. We have been tired from doing this work, and not enough people are doing anything to dismantle the abusive system, choosing instead to tokenize us and make us fight each other for entertainment. Squid Games has nothing on a smirking, well-placed, “Well, we’ll hire a person of color, but we want the beeeeeest one. Look, look, they’re fighting again!”

Secondly, if certain people have to remain in control of the resources, progress, and action taken, those people are completely useless in the quest for liberation. Expecting the world to be on pause while people “learn” is the height of entitlement, and most of us are done with letting this distraction slide. People have been given countless chances and centuries to “learn,” but remain dedicated to preserving a dominant narrative that relies on abuse to sustain itself. It is now time to acknowledge the universal responsibility to come together in a way that fosters healthy connection and reciprocal vulnerability. If people are unwilling to do that, they forfeit their rights to maintain connections and people are allowed to disengage. Since nobody asked for oppression in the first place, people who oppress others never earned the right to keep people oppressed. It is my firm belief that a lot of the current escalations stem from people refusing to give abusers passes with good reputations and the benefit of the doubt. Lying is lying, and one cannot connect with anyone they see as under their control; that is literally impossible.

Finally, if people expect liberation to come in a way that makes everyone happy, such people are useless against the resistance they will definitely encounter. While I have had to walk away from a couple of teams for the sake of my mental health, the final team is actually holding firm against the resistance. The stress alone is exhausting, but people who only live for their reputations are being threatened for the first time in their lives. I made even less money this year than I did last year, but this year involved a conscious choice to stand in my convictions, and I regret little except the pain I have seen around me. Believe me, anyone who can walk past homeless people in freezing temperatures over a failing grid without crying is a completely lost cause. “Happy” is usually a vapid state of being which means that the holder cannot process complex emotions, and dismantling the dominant narrative is nothing if not complex. Liberation means equilibrium for all, not bliss, so people are going to need to “learn” how to stop requiring nonstop external validation to exist.

There are those who will stick their nose in the air while screaming, “Reverse racism!” I would ask those people why they deserve to be coddled and protected above me, but then that would require them to consider why they rush to denigrate the words of others instead of pausing to self reflect. Too many people come to the table of racial justice ready to demand that everyone just keep waiting, as if they get to saunter into liberation holding a parasol in one hand, a mint julep in the other, and somehow extending both middle fingers at people who are already exhausted. The probability of enthusiasm for that attitude is just as impossible as that scenario. People have had their waiting time, “learning” time, and “nice” time — and managed to deplete all of it. BIPOCQ have no trust in people who squander the lives of others, and we owe no allegiance to those who enable the dominant narrative. We have eight years to get human behavior back on track and create societies that allow everyone to exist, many to thrive. Folks will come together when others act in good faith, because trust is earned, not commanded.