Born free and looking for justice: What “justice” means to me

 Won't you help to sing

This songs of freedom-

'Cause all I ever have:

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs;

Redemption songs.

Bob Marley

I wish I knew how

It would feel to be free

I wish that I could break

All the chains holding me

I wish I could say

All the things that I'd like to say

Say 'em loud say 'em clear

For the whole round world to hear

Nina Simone

Here I am, born after the so-called modern Civil Rights Movement. Here I am, a part of a generation that is close (in time) to this movement for justice; but most of my living “in” the Movement is done via readings and watching documentaries. Here I am a so-called beneficiary of the Civil Rights Movement. I stand in front of a college classroom, me a Black woman, an immigrant Black woman, a Black woman only a few generations past slavery and indentured servitude, as a college professor. Here I am the mother of a teen daughter who lives in a world that tells her that there is no racism. She is told this “lie” of post-racalism because for example, she does not see the possibility of herself in older Black women as there are no Black female teachers (or males for that matter) at her school. How then do I understand justice? How does my social identity and the context within which I reside shape my understandings of justice and freedom?

March on Washington

As a child, growing up in Barbados, I was fed a steady diet of Bob Marley. To this day, my mother owns every Bob Marley record. I can fondly remember me singing along to “Get up Stand up”, and “No woman, No Cry”. I am the point where I simply hear a few opening bars of a Marley song and I can start singing. I didn’t know that Marley’s music was about social justice. As a child, I didn’t know of or fully appreciate my mother’s commitment to justice. Marley’s music was simply something that was a part of our lives. Here commitment to social justice was simply a part of our lives. Then at the age of 16 I migrated to the US to attend college. At the age of 21, while in graduate school, I had an experience that reminded me of my so-called space in society. I was walking one morning and out ran a lady yelling “Nigger, Nigger.” She was clutching her robe and dressed in her house slippers. The anger I felt after this experience, coupled with the isolation I felt in higher education in general, left me wondering if there was ever a space for me in society. My experiences in higher education exposed me to racism and injustices in a way that I had not experienced before.

The injustices I experienced challenged my understanding of freedom. However, those songs my mother poured into me and that sense of self my parents cultivated served as the foundation for my response to the injustices I experienced. I didn’t always know how to name my experiences and how I wanted to respond to them. But the lyrics of Bob Marley, among others, and the teachings of my parents helped me to see my experiences as part of what I eventually learned was structural and institutional racism, sexism, and classism.

The words of my teachers and of random strangers caused anger; but they also prompted me to dig deeper into understanding intersectionality and justice.

The legacy of Black women, known and un-known to me, served as my “drinking gourd”. What is it that Black women sing about when they sing spirituals, the blues…? What is that yearning in their voice? It is a yearning to be free.

My digging led me to the likes of Nina Simone, to the works of Audre Lorde, Zora Neal Hurston, and Langston Hughes among others. I found the writings of Black women such as the Combahee River Collective, Dorothy Roberts, Nikol Alexander-Floyd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. These women gave me a home for my raced-gendered-classed experiences. Through these various voices I have come to define a notion of justice.

Justice involves critically analyzing how the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality work to constrain access, life choices, and understandings of self. Justice is not only about critical assessment of these intersecting oppressive structures; it is also about defining “my” reality. Although I use the term “my” I recognize that “my” incorporates all members of my larger community—those who are not free.

My struggle for justice is an on-going process. At this stage of my life I am confronted with teaching my teen daughter about justice—social, economic, cultural and political. My challenge stems from, in part that unlike me she is being raised in a majority environment—one that espouses a notion of color-blindness. She is one of two Black girls in her class. The irony of this color-blind ideology is that racism and the racial order is often hidden in plain sight. Injustice remains unchallenged as a result of silence. There is no community available for me to ground my daughter in—a community that reaffirms her Blackness in the way that I had as a child growing up in Barbados. That is just a part of the problem. Culturally she’s inundated with notions of beauty that often render her invisible. My attempts to counter the dominant narratives she confronts is often met with silence, mis-understanding, or a type of sympathy but very little action to actually change the environment in a critically manner. 

Often I’m left singing the words of Nina Simone, “I wish I knew how to be free”. I wish that I knew how it is for my daughters, biological and non-biological, to be free. Until then there is no justice. 

So, I’m Angry? The better question is why are you scared?

I want you to take a careful look at the above picture and tell me what you see. Don’t just give it a sweeping glance, take your time and look at it. This is important for the story that I’m about to weave. 

“Dangerous Linda” in response to a blog post I wrote said, 

“Are you sure you're not an angry woman? You kind of seem like one to me. Just an observation, for whatever that's worth to you...”

After Gabriel Douglass won the gold medal in the all-around women’s gymnastics competition, Bob Costas (NBC commentator) said,

“You know, it's a happy measure of how far we've come that it doesn't seem all that remarkable, but still it's noteworthy, Gabby Douglas is, as it happens, the first African-American to win the women's all-around in gymnastics. The barriers have long since been down, but sometimes there can be an imaginary barrier, based on how one might see oneself.”

How do we begin to interpret the picture celebrating friendships and victory? How do we begin to interpret a White woman, who has never met me, telling me and indeed insisting that she knows that I am angry? How do we interpret Costas’ statement?

Let’s take the picture first. On their Facebook page, Girls on the Run International posted the above picture. Its status update read,

"We love this image of the USA Gymnastics Women's team holding hands after they won the gold in the Women's Team final yesterday in London. This image reminds us of how so many Girls on the Run cross the finish line holding hands with their teammates. The women of the gymnastics team are an example to us all, not just because they won the gold, but because of the friendship and teamwork they have shown the world. They are truly inspiring!"

Girls on the Run characterizes itself as an inclusive, multicultural program designed to foster a “world where every girl knows and activates her limitless potential and is free to boldly pursue her dreams.” The image used to celebrate the friendships fostered between girls seems to belie, consciously or unconsciously, their commitment to multiculturalism. The women’s team, not including alternates, comprise of five young women. In the foreground of the picture, brightly lit, are four girls with tightly clasped hands celebrating their victory. Missing is Gabby. In the background, off to the side, with her back to the camera stands Gabby. Her smile, often described as electric and engaging, is now invisible to the viewing public. Her very African features are removed from sight. In this picture “depicting” the team we see Gabby but yet we do not see Gabby. In a picture that depicts friendships, Gabby is excluded from the clasp. What does this suggest about interracial friendships—Gabby is the one African American young woman on the team? What narrative is conveyed in separating Gabby from whiteness?

Depicting Black women in this manner serves a larger political project—whether or not the person using the photograph is consciously or unconsciously engaging in this project.  In the words of Kres and Van Leeuween "Like linguistic structures, visual structures point to particular interpretations of experience and forms of social interactions "(Kress and Van Leeuween 1996, p.2). Indeed pictures speak a thousand words. They tell us who gets to be designated as pretty, worthwhile, and who is included in our understanding of community. One reading of the above picture suggests that Gabby is an outsider—she is not a part of the larger gymnastics world. 

Now, to “Dangerous Linda”. Dangerous Linda, by deploying a historical tactic often used to silence Black woman, was attempting to delegitimize my claims. In her attempt to construct me as “angry”,  Dangerous Linda employed two narratives—one of irrationality and one of morality. The intersection of irrationality and morality with race and gender tends to produce a Black woman who is “senseless” and incapable of moving beyond her basic childlike instincts. Think of the child who is throwing a temper tantrum. As she indicated I was incapable, even if angry, to engage in critical thought. Implied is that I did not have the intellectual capability, regardless of the fact that I hold a Ph.D., to offer a critique of American society in general and White women’s tactic understanding of racial hierarchies. In my response, I asked why was such a categorization necessary, why not comment on the substance of the argument made in the post? The response once again informed me that I was angry.

Bob Costas, what was he attempting to do? Is he suggesting that there is a level playing field and that all Black girls have access to gymnastics and the possibility of winning gold? Costas deploys the rhetoric of post-racialism, which is an ideology that suggests that racial differences are no longer salient. It is part of the color-blind rhetoric that actually relies on racialized hierarchies. He seeks to minimize and in fact erase racism. In his comments, Costas seems to be implying that Black women and Blacks in general face only the psychological barriers that they impose on themselves. He sits on the outside telling Black folk that their problem is internal. Bob Costas, while recognizing the triumph of Gabby also engages in a similar tactic as used by Dangerous Linda and to some extent the image used by Girls on Run International. He too delegitimizes the voices of Black women by suggesting that barriers, while he was primarily referring to racialized barriers, I’m also including gender, class and sexuality barriers, no longer exist. Thus, Black women cannot make the claim that many of the inequalities they confront on a daily basis springs from these barriers. Now it is about individual desire and individual ability. Thus, if you fail to win the gold, the problem rest solely at your feet. Society is now free of its responsibilities to address inequalities—in terms of access to sports, education, health, etc. I wanted to recommend that Mr. Costa’s read Souls of Black Folk, Invisible Man, Native Son and any of the speeches penned by Maria Stewart, among countless other works by Black men and women living in the U.S. 

Girls on the Run International, Dangerous Linda and Bob Costas are all engaging in the same practice—marginalizing the voices of Black women. Choosing to speak for us and to depict us in a way where we are there, but our existence is only seen and understood via their lens. These individuals don’t seem to understand that they are looking at the world via cracked lenses; lenses that hold the scars of race, class, gender and sexuality hierarchies. They do not own their privilege in defining how society sees or not sees Black women. 

Black women are being marginalized. Yet when we take the time to challenge our marginalization by publicly speaking some attempt to discredit us. Why? What is the politics behind such actions? Why are they afraid of Black women speaking on their behalf? 

These rhetorical strategies used by Girls Run International, Dangerous Linda, and Bob Costas limit Black women’s quest for social justice. They also mask White insecurities. Turning the spotlight on Black women as the source of the problem or ignoring them all together allows some to easily ignore environment, culture, racism, threats, and discrimination and their impact on the daily lives of Black women. What might we learn if the spotlight was turned in the other direction? Why is there such resistance to and fear against turning to the spotlight to look at White behaviors?