Black Skin, White Masks - Full Free Text (English Translation)
[Trigger warning: very detailed descriptions of racism]
"The former slave wants his humanity to be challenged; he is looking for a fight; he wants a brawl. But too late: the black Frenchman is doomed to hold his tongue and bare his teeth."
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honour and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.
Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power [Full Text]
I feel crazy like most people don't encounter this level of hostility just going about their day. Feels like people won't believe me or that I'm doing something to instigate.
An old lady on a mostly empty bus picking a fight with me because my jacket sleeve was touching the seat next to mine, shoving my stuff and blocking me preventing me from getting up and changing seats. Drivers leaning on their horn cussing me out for crossing AT the crosswalk ON a pedestrian light. Fellow pedestrians picking me out to rage at on PACKED busy sidewalks full of knocking limbs, claiming I'm being uniquely ruder than everyone else. Passerby greeting me in non-English and then scream slurs at me for glancing briefly then ignoring them. Random bougie women at the farmer's market raising a stink to the stall workers about me touching produce with my bare hands. Not picking up and putting down different individual items, literally just touching the piece of fruit of vegetable I was going to buy, like everyone else does. Old man harrassing me for eating lunch on a park bench, on a day with many empty benches and several picnickers. MULTIPLE neighbors over the years convinced that I don't live here and trying to get the cops involved, often with other neighbors or the superintendent standing right there vouching for me.
It's like, the customer service rageout when you work retail, except ALSO when I'm not even working just existing in public. Male staff in stores barking orders at me like I'm an employee not a customer. Some stranger at a cafe miffed that I'm not a public nanny service and won't watch her kid for a sec, like I'm an employee not a customer.
And office work is not better either, the number of people who I NEVER interact with, who randomly snap at me for doing things everyone else does: turn on music during grind time, leaving food in the office fridge overnight, clean equipment because maintenance crew is understaffed, chewing gum, not picking up slack on projects outside my purview.
Friends-of-friends and boyfriends-of-friends who go to war against me, over truly nothing, trying to push me out of our shared social spheres. Somewhat skeptical friends startled when someone they know launches into a one-sided beef after we're introduced, apologizing to me saying they understand what I mean now.
White people at protests looking to unload their personal baggage onto someone.
And the endless parade of mean girls waging low-grade petty social snideness.
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I don't get bullied bullied in peer groups with consistent cohesion: my character tends to hold up when I'm given time and opportunity to be a full person within a stable community. I do well in personal relationships that are my choice--if rifts form, they form over deep disagreements about important values. Small arguments are infrequent and resolve smoothly. With street people, the demographic that get stereotyped for being aggro, I have more positive and neutral interactions compared to the way I hear others talk about their experiences. All in all, I think make a satisfactory effort at being pro-social.
But that status quo middle, the world of the average joe, the body of society many claim to be "mostly good, mostly decent, or at least polite", the demographic pointed at when they say "get off the internet and realize normal people in the real world don't behave badly"... I'm in conflict with consistently. Consistently three or four times a month in public, one or two people who are important to every person I am a friendly with, every person I work for.
Yes, I'm that cliche who sits on 5 or 6 different axis of marginalization, who is often mocked and considered impossible to tolerate simply because I've been assigned too many politicized identities. But do I look that different? Act so disruptively? I don't think so? It feels like a stretch to attribute all this negativity to just implicit daily prejudice. but what else could it be?
it seems out of my control to reduce all this social friction--and simultaneously--it feels like there's no way this is actually happening, like I have some kind of social schizophrenia where my map of reality just doesn't hold up. Or maybe this is normal, this level of hostility IS what's considered decent and fine. Like when that movie Ladybird came out and everyone acted like, yes, it's normal and decent and fine if all the older women in your life fucking hate your guts for still needing oxygen while existing near them.
Let's get pretentious about not being pretentious! Dark chocolate is drywall actually. Bonus AmericaBad
"Everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us. And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.
Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However, the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive the love that is given to us. To open our hearts more fully to love’s power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice. We must face the confusion and disappointment that much of what we were taught about the nature of love makes no sense when applied to daily life. Contemplating the practice of love in everyday life, thinking about how we love and what is needed for ours to become a culture where love’s sacred presence can be felt everywhere, I wrote this meditation."
- bell hooks (Rest in Power)