flesh forgets nothing
the thought, the flick of a leaf
shadows fluttering
flesh 4
before abstraction
the two men walk by, they raise
they drop their arms, hands
flesh 3
outside, the play of
shadows on the street, breezes
fluttering the leaves
flesh 2
cruelty abides
unaknowledged in walls of
muscle, bone, and mind
flesh 1
silly, the child laughs
begin with gobbledygook
catching in the throat
Domesticity: Black Lives Matter 3
In “What We Believe” (https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/), the organizers of The Black Lives Matter Global Network explicitly commit themselves to work to “build and nurture a beloved community,” which is another name for what I call a sustainable domesticity—a way of making the world a home in which all of us and our families can flourish for generations to come. In this and the following posts, I am going to comment on each part of the statement because I have not found a clearer, more inspiring, articulation of what the work involved in nurturing a sustainable domesticity requires.
masses: pandemic
the mauve cloud of wild
silence storming through the grid
all we thought we knew
Domesticity: Black Lives Matter 2
While abusive police practices disproportionately injure and destroy the bodies, families, homes, and communities of Blacks, Native Americans, other people of color, and immigrants, police have, in responding to recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations, often used violent measures against and have incarcerated non-violent White, as well as Black, protestors and others, including journalists, while they have usually not used such measures against gun-wielding white nationalists protesting stay-at-home orders. These different responses expose an historical dynamic Thandeka and other researchers on “whiteness” have identified as lying at the heart of white racism in America. The owner class, which was and remains a small minority of the population, deliberately constructed and continues to promote white racism as a means of dividing and controlling the very large majority of people who are not members of the owner class. (Thandeka, Learning to be White, Bloomsbury, 2000).
Domesticity: Black Lives Matter 1
I am writing today over a month after the white policemen, Derek Chauvin, murdered the African-American, George Floyd. Since then, Black Lives Matter protests across the country and around the world have been daily events.
As a number of people have observed, the murder, the demonstrations, and the violence expose the systemic white racism that has destroyed and continues to destroy millions upon millions of lives since European conquerors and colonists set foot on the land now described as the United States of America almost five hundred years ago.
Domesticity: Beginning Anew
I am beginning this series of posts on domesticity anew in the midst of five related global responses to five related global crises: the Black Lives Matters movement that responds to systemic racism, and especially police assaults and murders of people of color; the movement to contain and limit the spread of COVID-19; the MeToo movement that responds to systemic sexism, and especially the harassment, assault, and rape of women; the movements to respond to the current economic and political crises that expose the injustice and cruelty of dominant political and economic systems; and the movements that respond the climate and extinction crises that are already extinguishing vast numbers of species and threaten to make our earth uninhabitable for vast numbers more, as well as for most of our descendants.
