Colin Powell has been impressing me recently.

"Well, he's not a Muslim. He's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the right answer is, 'Well, what if he is?'. Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in America? ... Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he could be president?"

--Colin Powell

(via Tudo Bom(b))

The myriad ways in which I would fuck up a child.

KS and I had an interesting discussion about this once a while ago, and I've wanted to explore it in more depth. 

1. Mommy, what's race?

A social construction based on ill-conceived notions of biological difference. Race doesn't actually exist, but the significance Western societies have placed on race for the last 4 or 5 centuries means that people's lives are still significantly affected by these categories White folks made up. 

Well what makes people different races?

Race is most often attributed to physical features, like the color of your skin, the structure of your face, or the texture of your hair. But it's silly because no "Black" people actually have black skin--there are some Black people with skin the color of honey, some with skin the color of chocolate, some with skin the color of soil, and some with skin the color of sand. We're a rainbow, but they call us all Black. Your great-great-great-grandmother was a woman with brown skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes--that doesn't make her any less of a Black woman than me.

Is it important to you that you're Black?

Very much so. 

But I thought you said race didn't exist. It seems silly to care so much about something made up.

Well, just because it was made up doesn't mean it doesn't affect your daily life. Like, your teacher made up rules for her classroom. You still have to follow them, right, even though they were made up. And it's nice having a community of people you can relate to--there are certain kinds of food or music or movies or just general culture that other Black people are more likely to have experienced than people of other races.

 So do all people of one race have the same culture? 

Well, no. People of the same race can come from very different cultures, if they're from different parts of the country or different parts of the world, or depending on how much money their family had growing up.

But then how do you feel connected to them? I don't understand.

 It's okay, my child, no one does.

2. Mommy, am I a boy or a girl?

I can't tell you that. Only you can tell yourself. Do you feel like a boy or do you feel like a girl? Or do you not feel like either? You don't HAVE to be a boy OR a girl--you can be whatever you want.

What are boys and girls supposed to feel like? What does it feel like to not feel like a boy or a girl?

Boys and girls and people can all feel however they want to feel. There's no way boys are allowed to feel that girls aren't, or the other way around.

 So is there any difference between being a boy and being a girl?

Most people raise boys and girls differently, but there aren't any inherent differences between boys and girls, except that MOST little boys have penises and MOST little girls have vaginas.

My teacher yelled at me when I used those words at school. She said to tell you that those words are too...va-va--vulgar for children. 

That's because your teacher thinks children are idiots. Most people do. They're wrong. I think it's absolutely pointless to not teach you about your own body and other people's bodies with the right terms. I'll write a note to your teacher.

Wait, but Mommy, you said MOST little boys have penises and MOST little girls have vaginas. So there are some boys with vaginas and some girls with penises?

Yes. And some of those little boys will grow up to be women, and some of the little girls will grow up to be men, and some of them will just stay exactly how they are. 

But at school there are bathrooms for boys and for girls. I don't know if I feel like a little boy or if I feel like a little girl. How do I know which bathroom to use?? 

Gendered bathrooms are cisgenderist and heteronormative. You should be able to use whatever bathroom you want.

But girls aren't allowed in the boys' bathroom and boys aren't allowed in the girls' bathroom! What about the little girls with penises? Which bathrooms do they use? 

Your school discriminates against them and makes them deny themselves every time they have to pee.

3. Mommy, what's sex?

Sex is a thing that happens between two or more people who may or may not love each other and may or may not be married (if they're even allowed to get married) and those people might be a man and a woman, or they could be a woman and a woman, or a man and a man, or they could not identify according to the gender binary, and there might be more than two of them. Sex often involves something called "penetration," which could be when a man puts his penis into a woman's vagina, or into her anus, or into the anus of another man. There is also oral sex, where a person uses their mouth and tongue to please another person, either by licking the vagina or licking and sucking on the penis. Sex sometimes makes babies, because when men have sex they make something called sperm, which are little swimmy things that look like tadpoles, which can join with a woman's egg inside of her to make a baby. But lots of times people have sex just because it's fun, which is perfectly fine as long as you're being safe. There are gross diseases that you can get from having sex if you're not safe, and you always have to be careful about making babies when you don't want them yet. The most important thing about sex, that needs to always be true no matter what kind of people are having sex or how many of them are there, is that the people having sex always have to both want to be having sex, or it's a very very bad and scary thing called rape.

4. Mommy, what's a church? My friend Bobby said he has to go there on Sunday mornings. We only go out to breakfast on Sunday mornings!

Churches are buildings for people who are religious. Religious people usually believe in a God, which is a being that created all of the people and the things in the world. That God is usually a man and he usually makes all sorts of rules that religious people have to follow. He usually says that if people follow his rules, he will reward them after they die, and punish all the people who don't believe in him or follow his rules?

Oh no! Are we going to get punished?

No, because religion is another made up thing. I don't think God exists, and things that don't exist can't hurt me.

How do you know he doesn't exist?

Well, I guess I don't. I can't see any evidence that he exists, but I can't see any evidence that he doesn't, either. It just seems silly to me to live my life according to something I can't see even the effects of. And a lot of the rules God makes in the Bible, or the gods of other religions make in their holy books, make me really angry. They say a lot of bad things about a lot of different kinds of people just because of the kinds of people they are, which is hatred and discrimination. People use their religion all the time to take rights away from people or to hurt or even kill them. I don't think religions are good things.

So are Bobby and his family bad people for going to church?

Not necessarily. People can pick and choose the parts of a religion that they want to practice and the parts that they don't. So if they still make good decisions and don't discriminate against people or want their rights to be taken away, they can still be good people even if they're religious.  

etc., etc.

...My hypothetical child wouldn't be able to interact with people of hir own age group until college at the earliest. I imagine intense bullying, innumerable parent-teacher conferences about what's going on at home, possible suspensions for screaming "fuck the gender binary" or regularly using the "wrong" restroom. I would encourage them to explore crushes on children all along the gender spectrum, which could be dangerous. I would have to homeschool hir if I wanted to avoid having to counter-teach and make hir unlearn the socialization of the school and hir peers. The world would actively work to destroy my hypothetical child. I couldn't bear to witness that.

"You are born of sex. Your every body cell is a sex cell, all your energy is sex energy. So if religions teach that sex is bad, sex is sin, they have condemned you completely. And not only have they condemned you, now you will condemn yourself. Now you cannot go beyond it and you cannot leave it, and now it is a sin. You are divided; you start fighting with yourself. And the more this guilt can be created in you--over the concept that sex is unholy--the more neurotic you will become."

--Osho

via Come Correct 

 

I wanted to tweet this, but it's too long,

and editing it in any way would be doing VIOLENCE.

"I'm so SICK of being made invisible by people. Can't be black and queer. Can't be black and female. Can't be black and non-religious. Like, what the fuck? I need some of y'all to have a fucking seat." 

--A commenter on this post

Reblogged from  Quirky Black Girls  

I would like to find the person who wrote this and hug them. Repeatedly. (But only with their consent, of course.) 

Tangent to the last post:

Second location/situation that makes me feel isolated from "the black community", especially the black Princetonian community, probably to an even larger degree than do black parties: The Black Church. Well, okay, the Princeton University Gospel Ensemble concerts, which is basically the same thing. I only know of one other active member of the black community here who is non-religious...it's hard out here for black non-Christians!

I basically feel socially obligated to go to PUGE concerts. There were approximately 3 people on stage tonight with whom I am neither friends nor acquaintances. I want to be able to treat a PUGE concert like I treat one of K's Glee Club concerts. In fact, no offense to K, but I want to be able to appreciate it even MORE, because gospel is much more closely related to the kind of music I enjoy listening too. I want to be able to go support and appreciate my friends' musical endeavors. But when the first words out of the emcee's mouth are Praise God, and when she says (like they always say) that we are not here to enjoy a concert, but to praise and worship our Lord, all I feel is isolated. I don't know about the rest of you, but I came here to enjoy a concert, and I don't want to be made to feel like an outsider and a bad person because of it.

I'm sure it's hard for people who were raised in the church, or at least with religion as an active part of their household, to understand that the act of entering a church is hard for me. It is difficult for me to sit in a pew within inches of a Bible. It is difficult for me to sit awkwardly as the congregation stands and bows their heads in prayer. It is difficult for me not to jitter my leg and fidget with my hair and my bracelets as the women sitting behind me shout Hallelujah! and Praise Jesus! and pat me on the shoulder saying "Blessings unto you." It is DIFFICULT, and every muscle in my body is tense for the majority of my time there. It takes nearly every measure of my patience and self-control to fight the urge to take flight. 
 
But I do this. I do this regularly, for every concert PUGE has. Because these are my friends. And I owe them my support...especially when my support doesn't cost any money. But, correct me if I'm wrong, I always thought churches were supposed to be welcoming places. So when a performer, who happens to be a good friend of mine, asks the audience if we love gospel, and when not everyone raises their hands, he says, "Some of y'all lookin real hesitant; I don't know why you're here," I. don't. feel. welcomed. I ducked out before the invitation this year, but Preacher, despite your best intentions, inviting me to join your church and feel the love and warmth and the spirit of Jesus is unwelcoming by its very nature--you are assuming that your way of life is better than mine and that I should want to take up your way. Your Bible recognizes that people should come as they are; I would like you to give me the honor of leaving that way as well, if I should so choose.

I have problems with the black church. I have problems with "the church". I have problems with Christianity, and with Islam, and with Judaism, and with religion as a concept. I have problems appreciating songs that make relationships with God sound like celebrity obsessions or abusive domestic situations. But I try very hard to make these problems take second place to my love and support for my friends, and I hate that my aversion to the isolation and judgment inherent in the invitation makes me miss the reception that would let the friends I came to support know that I was even here. It makes me wonder why I even put myself through this.   

Thanks, Giving

I always chuckle to myself when folks call this Turkey Day

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve always been a ham kind of girl.

I always wonder when folks call this Thanksgiving Day

who exactly I’m supposed to be thankful towards

For Jesus is someone else’s Lord and Savior, and I don’t

praise Allah either. My thanks are jokes to Life’s daily

demigods and I’d like something a bit more substantive

than thanking my lucky stars. The Universe just sounds like a

cop-out for people who don’t like the sound of God.

So who am I thanking?

My mother, for bringing me into this world and damn near

breaking her back every day to give me every inch of life she can spare?

The ex-stepfather I abhor, because if he hadn’t walked into my mom’s life

mine would have been displaced, my friends and family misplaced, a family

of two and two alone gone back to Georgia, my mom’s first home?

Georgia, where my family has lived since before we had a choice.

Should I thank my too-many-greats-to-count grandmother for surviving the passage

in the dank disease-infested bottom of that ship?  Or my grandfather

of the same generation for liking what he saw up on the auction block

enough to sneak away from his wife in the middle of the night  and

sell his daughter away when she was born with blonde hair and blue eyes?

Blonde hair and blue eyes, like some of my closest friends,

so should I thank the late Dr. King for taking the glory from everyone who’d

dreamt before him?  Chris Hall, my high school’s English Department Supervisor

for making me realize the dreams I’d dreamt weren’t lofty enough, that I was calling

a sledding hill a mountain when I had the tools to tackle Everest? Chris Burch,

my first sweetheart, for teaching me that sometimes it’s better when dreams don’t come true?

The admissions committee member that tossed me into the right pile, for reminding me that

sometimes, they do? Nene, for seeing what I was repressing and getting me involved?

India.Arie for reminding me to Slow Down and appreciate the Little Things, like

whoever instituted a monthly Soul Food Night at the Princeton Quadrangle Club?

Under chaos theory, tabula rasa, and the idea of alternate realities, should I thank everyone

 with whom I have ever crossed paths, for without them I might not be me? All six billion, eight-

hundred-eighty-four-million, thirty-seven thousand, eight-hundred-forty-six people on the planet,

because the world might somehow be different without one of them? Should I just thank myself,

or include things I simultaneously love and hate, like society and affirmative action, like my father? 

The power went out as we were warming the candied yams. I used my laptop as a flashlight during the

candles-and-matches-hunt, and as we joined hands to bless our candlelit Thanksgiving dinner, I realized

exactly how many people and things and bittersweet circumstances I have to be thankful for. They each

have their own masters, Gods, and engineers, and so today I will simply thank the ties that bind us all.