Reclaiming Words

I was listening to my friend Zara talk today about her experiences as a Black trans woman applying as a claimant for refugee status in Canada. And while I've been working on my anti-racism work since I was 15, so about 45 years now, I'm not near done. That shit is like pollution. You breathe it in. Everyone breathes it in. Pollution doesn't care what colour you are, how much money you have, it'll poison you just the same as that brown person who's picked up that Black folk are somehow lesser, in a way they're not sure why, but who is going to assert yourself on their behalf as a new immigrant who doesn't understand her new country yet? So even if you didn't get it from birth, you can still breathe it in like anyone else.

So all the time I've spent working on this...I'm still breathing. Which means the pollution, even as I work to clear my body, is building up. I try to stay ahead of its advance. Take down more than I take in, in a given time period. You don't suddenly become immune to this stuff because you noticed it. It's still creeping into your body and mind, with a thousand things you never even notice.

And if you do notice them, welcome, my Black friends. I'm glad you've chosen to read this far.

So I know, for instance, that if someone says to me with an airy gesture, "Well, I was racist, of course, but I'm not NOW," what they're saying is they didn't get very far before giving up. If you get into it, you know. This is your life ahead of you. You want to make an inroad? You gotta stay ahead of the pollution.

Which gives us a couple of choices, as people whom this pollution causes to be horrible to people who don't look like them.

We could try fighting the pollution at its source. That's whiteness, and a society built to reinforce its primary position. Until we see that structure, and understand how extensive its reach is, we cannot make progress on that. You gotta learn. You wanna learn? Listen to, read, watch, think about...the people who know the most about fighting for liberation. The people who've been doing it for generations, as we tried to subjugate them and break their spirits and stop them from learning or otherwise gaining power in absolutely systemic ways. That's a truth, not an opinion.

I've been an activist for queer rights for 34 years. I do it because...it needed doing. It's one of the few things my disastrous mid-80s time in the Canadian Forces has taught me something truly useful.

If it needs doing, DO IT. It's a sort of...team-based thing, that military services inculcate, where if you see a problem, you report it, yes, but you report it by saying how you fixed it. Or how you ascertained that you couldn't, and an idea for what would be needed to fix the problem.

All my other useful lessons have been given to me as gifts by Black activists. Some old, and now gone, some young, and just beginning. Far more, in terms of those skills, than you'd expect by population percentage. And, in the same sense that a sliver of wood can "give" you gangrene, and thus kill you, white people "gave" that to them. Because we've been the ones causing that hundreds of years of organising experience TO BE NEEDED.

Note I'm not claiming white agency in developing Black activism. I'm saying it's an immune response to a virus: whiteness. And people infected by it.

Their skills are theirs, hard-won with blood and sweat and late nights of planning and thinking over decades, centuries. As I said...if we caused it, it's by being the irritant that made the pearl. The oyster did that. All we did was make its life unpleasant. Like that original irritant.

And later, if you come back...I dare you to...but if you come back for more reality on what whiteness means about your moral obligations in our shared society, I'll show you how you can start working to earn that trust, the trust of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour - a somewhat contentious acronym, I acknowledge, but short and to the point for this purpose) people around you.

I'm not gonna baby anybody. I will call it as I see it. I recommend use of some of that wisdom I was gifted. "If it ain't about you, don't make it about you."

So. Someone says "Gah, I hate it when men do Activity X!" There is no time it is ever useful to respond with "Well, actually, not all men do..." No time. Ever. Replace men with white people, or any group that stands in a place of privilege over others in the context they live in.

If the statement they made doesn't apply to you? Then don't apply it to you. If they'd meant you, you'd have been named as part of the group they wanted to name. You'll find that it makes the ones you DO need to swallow and cope about hearing much easier not to get upset by, if you recognise the number of times they weren't talking about you. Zara and I, in a year in which we've talked and texted dozens of times a day, have come to a point where I know exactly what's happening when she's calling me out on something, and when she's just venting about something "white people" did. I assess: do I do that? No. I don't think I do. or maybe Yes. I think I might. I should look into that, and fix it. Do it regularly, and it doesn't hurt.

And she has called me out on things. Sometimes big things. And I've tried to stay calm and non-defensive, I bite down on offering excuses or reasons, either (neither is appropriate then; focus on the person who's been hurt!). I acknowledge what I did, explicitly, to show I've listened and understood what I've been called on. And I start thinking about how I don't do that again.

If, later, we are talking about it in the calm of conversation, maybe it will come up, what I see as the reasons for why I behaved badly. And if so, as friends, we can have that conversation. If we both want to then. Maybe she never wants to talk about it. That's fine too. I don't need to centre my need to get better over her position as the person I caused harm to. If I want that, the solution lies in my hand, as a wise old sergeant once told me about the concept of "blueballs". I can do all the emotional and intellectual wanking I want about it. On my time. Not hers.

I wanted to talk strictly about Zara today, but I think I'm gonna knock off there, and head for bed. But I've introduced you to her a bit, and tomorrow I'll tell you what my experience has been of her experience in Canada. I hope tomorrow.

Canadians: you won't like the news. White trans people: you might not either. I'm still gonna tell the story. I hope you'll find time to read it. And I hope some of you will find it in yourself to discover a US trans person near you in Canada, applying for asylum, and start helping them learn about life here, so they can make a life while they await their decisions. The more of us there are talking about them, the more effect we'll have on the zeitgeist in the country, and that can only help achieve the goal: kicking the door open for all trans and nonbinary people in the US to ignore the Safe Third Country Agreement, and be eligible for consideration for asylum in Canada for the duration of the emergency.

That's what we're aiming at. Why take a big shot at a little target, after all, right? So this is my Magnum Opus as an activist, and Zara, to my great comfort, is an incredible person to work beside in achieving it with her lead.

I tried this three years ago, with a petition to the Government of Canada, begging them to open the door to prevent what was coming. Now it's here, and they're still waffling. I saw the risk. I tried. 167,000 residents of Canada signed the petition.

It was refused. If you want to understand our position, please discover the story of the Canadian role in the fate of the Motor Ship St. Louis, in 1938 and 1939, and her ill-fated passengers. It's not hard to find on a search engine. But you may never have heard of it. It's not an episode we generally make a big display of how great we are with.

Goodnight, glowbox friends. Don't get squishy there in my monitor. I got a bigger one, so y'all can fit. The square pixelage is...well, it's gonna be a tight fit, so buddy up with someone you like.