I apologize for not getting this to you sooner. My life is a might bit of chaos right now. I am trying to heal and trying to help people at the same time. So many people in similar situations, and such little existing infrastructure to fill such massive need. I am doing my best.
A journalist asked me whether any of the people whose legal bills I have now paid are white. I refused to answer, and she noted as such in her article. It felt like a trick question, as she could somehow prove that I am a white supremacist if the individuals I have helped are white. But I have thought about this and the answer is quite obvious: of course they are white. If they weren’t they would not need my help. I am sure it has escaped exactly nobody’s attention that the ACLU is nowhere to be found on this matter, that is, white people who are daily facing racial discrimination and hostility as a continued condition of their employment. Thank you to respected civil rights leader Robert Woodson for pointing out how wrong this all is. That we have come to this, a mere fifty-seven years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, should be a bitter pill for all of us to swallow.
Speaking of swallowing….
It was not long after I started working in the Department of Residence Life at Smith that it became clear that discussing my “identity” would be a regular expectation of the job. After what happened in the library, this was a big red flag. I decided the best strategy was to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I swallowed my discomfort.
It soon became obvious that not only was I required to discuss my own “identity,” I was also expected to support and assist in the creation of a curriculum that asked students to do the same. In essence, a curriculum that teaches students that the good and moral thing to do is to reduce themselves and others to immutable characteristics. My discomfort grew.
As time went on, the demand to “take color into consideration” and engage in performative rituals that impute “power and privilege” or lack thereof to human beings based solely on skin color became increasingly difficult for me to swallow.
My anxiety and mental anguish grew to a level that threatened to destroy me. I lost weight. I was unable to adequately focus on my own physical needs nor those of my family. I could not sleep. I had a lot of trouble concentrating on anything for any extended period of time, including my job. I was being forced to swallow something that nobody under any circumstances can be expected to swallow without causing damage. That this was happening to me in a professional work environment, at an “elite” institution of higher learning was mind-bending. That this same institution is my alma mater is heart-breaking.
I have heard from a lot of people now who are trapped in hostile environments in which they are –as a continued condition of their employment– compelled to swallow a hurtful ideology and endure the psychologically abusive behavior it justifies in its name. This is resulting in wide scale damage to all of us, on both an individual and cultural level. We are looking at a major public health concern here.
The film Swallow was the first film in a long time I could watch the entire way through in one sitting. Inspired by his grandmother, filmmaker Carlo Mirabella-Davis endears us to the vulnerable fortitude of Hunter, a woman driven by a compulsion to ingest inedible objects. One reviewer describes Haley Bennet’s performance as a “tightly wound explosion” (an apt insight, too bad I can’t remember where I read it).
Deeply unsettling, this film outlines the choice so many of us face: Speak, or swallow.
And here is this weeks’ playlist
Yes Tim Pool! I saw your comment but I didn't want to give it away. It was a great experience.
It was great to see you on Tucker and Tim Pool! thank you for everything you do!