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Grow Anti-Racism
TO MY PROGRESSIVE ATHENS COMMUNITY:
By A Traumatized Blacqueer Activist editorial@flagpole.com
I am an Athens activist-scholar. As a
doctoral student studying black geogra
phies and white supremacist landscapes
in Athens, I have cut my teeth making
organized demands in this city around the
Baldwin Hall and Linnentown activism.
My dad, a refugee of Harleyville, S.C., dou
ble-takes at the reflection of his Southern
queer black offspring he raised in California.
I have at least two more years in Athens,
and I am preparing to sit alone for another
summer as I scroll through images of
black death, pain and sorrow. I’m so far
removed—removed from action, removed
from my black body,
and my black and
brown people. This
feels very similar to
when I was in my
master’s degree in Detroit, slowly deterio
rating as the endless flow of videos, images
and commentary of black death picked at
my decaying flesh. I could not bear to look,
and I could not bear to look away. So much
of me has died since then.
Truthfully, only my voice remains, and
I’ve seen its soft velvety tone disarm police
of their fear of my queer black body. I
dream of sharp objects removing my col
onized tongue. Only then would my body
reflect outwardly the pain I feel. However,
that would be a short-lived freedom, fol
lowed only by more mourning.
In this moment, our community plans to
raise the salaries of the police, while other
communities are burning down their local
precincts. We are where we are, and they are
where they are, and it requires organizing
to stage a rebellion.
Yes, a rebellion.
There are no short
cuts that allow us to skip
organizing. No amount
of rhetoric is going to
catapult us into this
moment ready to fight
institutions of state violence.
Why a rebellion? Because we have the
audacity to call this place—The Classic
City—’’progressive.” It is incrementalist, at
best. Really, there is no difference between
progressive and incrementalist; both are
anti-radical/anti-revolutionary movements
of people supporting small tweaks that
maintain settler colonialism and white
supremacist heteropatriarchy.
How can you fix your lips to say good
things about our “progress,” when a black
man is assaulted with a police vehicle and
there is no meaningful protest, while a
police officer gets $250,000 for defama
tion after assaulting this man and still no
protest, and the police chief who swiftly
removed the officer from our streets is
fired for that action—and there is again no
protest.
How about when, over the course of only
this past year, Athens-Clarke County police
summarily executed eight people, each
suffering from mental health crises at the
time—and we only bat an eye. And yet, we
lament that the “progressive” commission
starts to look and sound like the old one so
quickly.
I am responsible for the inaction as
much as anyone else, but we have to stop
lying to ourselves that our democratic vot
ing bloc means fuck all, that white liberals
are not moderates with hoods in their
closets, and that your white friends—those
who don’t do shit or don’t invest in doing
things well—don’t maintain the white
supremacist status quo.
Protest equals a set of people organized
to disrupt public space and normalcy, to
spread information, discomfort and aware
ness with the current state of affairs, and
to make demands of
people in power
Standing at the
arch with a sign with
other people is not
a protest in and of itself. You must make
organized demands outside the seat of
power, and then if you are ignored, let your
rage become a match to burn it all down as
if they did not hear you the first time.
This community is built on the stolen
lands of indigenous people and the rem
nants of slavery. The massive gravesite of
white supremacy we are living on top of
haunts us through its ghosts and descen
dants. This is at the same time global and
particular to Athens. As a friend pointed
out, “What makes Athens unique? Well,
Sherman didn’t burn it down. He should
have.”
Atlanta got a new ethos after it was
destroyed: no less white supremacist than
ours, but at least making room for black
capitalism. Again, no less white suprem
acist; however, the white supremacy that
exists in white liberal
spaces in Athens is vehe
ment, cancerous, self-re-
producing and inherited.
We grow what we
pay attention to. I need
white people to pay
attention to anti-racism and grow it in
themselves, their families, their communi
ties, their organizations and any place you
move into. If BIPOC have to doubt if you
are anti-racist, then you are not working
hard enough. None of us is guilty of creat
ing white supremacy, but we are all respon
sible for dismantling it. White people who
benefit from it hold the most power, either
inhibiting or kick-starting the growth of
anti-racism in this community.
There are three people in this scene: the
person standing on my neck, the people
black and white horrified watching my not-
so-slow death, and the white woman who
calls the police, weaponizing her feelings
and setting this scene into motion.
Where are the people ready to physically
remove this white man from my airways?
Even after the black man’s body was lifeless,
no one physically removed the white man
from this position.
We cannot let the police murder our
people in front of our eyes. Athens is a
tinderbox; are you ready to see it all burn?
If I were so inclined, I would start with the
white supremacist memorial downtown. ©
I need white people to pay
attention to anti-racism.
We cannot let the
police murder our
people in front of our eyes.
6 FLAGPOLE.COM | JUNE 3, 2020