Yesterday we celebrated Angela Davis' birthday in Black Kos.
It has been a tumultuous several days in many ways for members of our small community here at DKos. Lots of meta, more flaming...more back and forth and residual resentments.
I was still responding to comments that had been precipitated by a diary I wrote two days before. But this is not about that diary, This is about how some of us have been feeling about DKos and perhaps will offer some insights into how we can begin to heal some of the acrimony that is getting in the way of us learning to work together and understand each other a bit better.
I wrote a long response to a member of our community and I've been asked to post it as a diary.
Please bear with me. This will not be short.
The comment is here, but I'm going to take the liberty of expanding it a bit, since my thoughts may not have been clear enough at that hour of the morning and out of context.
Let me preface this by saying I do not presume to speak for all black Kossaks. This is my perspective on the thread and diary warfare that is taking place here. I was answering a remark made by a member of our community who is black, who essentially wanted to know why I didn't want to keep on fighting with certain people.
I talked to him about patience.
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...part of my patience (and I am not always patient) grows out of things I actually learned in our own community. When I was younger and an in-your-face militant with the big 'fro and combat boots I wound up having to deal with some of our nice little old church ladies who were diametrically opposed to everything we were about. They couldn't hear us, didn't want to have anything to do with us...wouldn't even take a copy of the newspaper to read.
Our attitude was fuck em. We had a bunch of nasty terms back then for Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas and such. We were the revolutionaries. We were so right on... that we were out to lunch. heh.
One old lady called the cops on us :)
You know - "The Pigs".
But a gentle organizer who was older than we were pointed out that if we couldn't reach our moms and dads and aunts and neighbors we were doing a piss poor job of organizing. That we needed to find ways to listen. That we had to bridge the gaps.
She said that we had to develop something called "patience".
We started to learn - then and there. That journey took me into churches and senior centers and police community board meetings ...later it led me into "hostile white territory" ...where I had to learn how to cross borders.
Our experiences in the Rainbow Coaltion forged by Fred Hampton led Young Lords and Panthers into new territories.
We went to Chinatown. We met Native Americans. We met with Appalachian whites.
Hell - the oddest trip was when East Coast Puerto Ricans (Afro-Caribbean folks) had to deal with militant Chicano/Tejano Mexican-Americans.
Totally new culture. We might as well have dropped in from another planet.
So now - here we are in a new world of cyberspace.
Made much more difficult by the facelessness of it all. Black Kos as the "smaller" community has allowed us to put a face to members of the community. We talk to each other - not just about issues but about simpler things - like what's on the table and peach cobbler and the birthday of a member's 99 year old grandmother.
We have learned in Black Kos to listen, and though we don't always agree with each other we've gotten pretty good at "hearing".
Much harder to do in the "larger site". There are other communities out there that have developed their own style, language and back and forth dialogue.
They may be hostile to "us" they may not be, or they might not even know we are here.
Some DKos communities are easier to enter because we have family members here at Bkos that are in them. The bridges have already been built. I've always been welcome where Aji is, or navajo, or TexMex, or in the old Morning Feature, CIK, or in plf515's reading series, or IGTNT because blue jersey mom is a member of both.
Those are a no-brainer.
Where it gets harder is trying to communicate with those who can't see past the "Black Kos" label (no matter what color the wearer is, since our community has members of all colors) which has now been amended or appended with "Obamabot" "Obama Defender"..."Apologist"...yadda yadda)
I found it instructive listening to Angela's tape when she was at Daddy King's church. She had the same training from some of the same wiser heads who knew how to bridge communities.
(This is the tape I was referencing):
Angela Davis on Women, Privilege and Prisons
Renowned civil rights and womens rights leader Angela Davis spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr Martin Luther King Jr's home church in downtown Atlanta on March 24, 2009 for the keynote address of Emory Universitys Womens History Month. Daviss long-standing commitment to prisoners rights dates to her involvement in the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers, which led to her own arrest and imprisonment in 1970.
Did she walk into the church and attack religion? Nope. Did she stand up and scream at the POTUS -nope. Hell, she is a socialist Marxist Lesbian.
She - like the rest of us never thought to see a black president in her life time. She was overjoyed. She quotes Dr. King about that - about his discussion with Robert Kennedy.
Dr King though it would happen in 25 years. Kennedy didn't see it happening till much further down the road.
So now we have the black president that in our wildest dreams we couldn't have imagined.
Not only is he POTUS he is proud of being black. She mentions how none of us cheered wildly about Condy Rice. And about how we all grimaced about Clarence Thomas.
But Barack Obama is a different story. He was a man we could take pride in.
He is smart, he is proudly black, he has worked in our community. We wept tears of joy and bemusement.
But - here's the rub. He is now President of the United States. The same United States that kept us in bondage. The same United States that has us in prisons in unbalanced proportions. The same United States that oppresses and rapes Haiti. The Capitalist, Corporate, USA.
We now have a contradiction to deal with.
Some other people don't have to wrestle with that contradiction at all. They have been in attack Bush mode for many years. Some go as far back as attack Nixon.
Intellectually they "applaud" oh nice...the potus is a black guy..and moving right along never shift gears. Never stop to figure out how their lack of taking the time to see how we, in the black community are absorbing and responding to this new challenge with its built in contradictions.
They stay in all out attack mode, and in doing so they alienate and isolate black folks who have many of the same critiques of the US government, and in fact have deeper and darker reasons to hate it all.
Part of that is they have the privilege to do so. It is after all - "their" country. So they don't stop to think about how what they do, and how they react severs the fragile bonds forged during the brief time when we were brought together by people like MLK.
Part of the black experience has been learning how to survive in a nation that hates you.
The patience of surviving is bred into our bones.
We end up being much more willing to walk the long slow walk to change. Pushing as we go but savoring each small victory along the way.
Just as I had to learn patience with those little old ladies. I had to 'cause they are the rock that has helped sustain us in a world that hates all of us equally - no matter Black Panther or Baptist.
They have the luxury to attack the POTUS with impunity. Along the way they can attack all those nice black lady baptists and at the same time honor MLK. No contradiction for them at all.
POTUS is not their black victory - he is ours. Rather than taking the time to stop and say how do we white folks move forward without dishonoring your joy...how do we work together to push for the changes we all see are important and build on that victory they forge ahead...heedless of who gets hurt in the process.
What do we do in response to this ? Some of us get totally pissed-off and say FUCK EM. Some of us have left Daily Kos, unable to function in a majority white environment. A few of us react as I did when young and dumb and just throw POTUS into the Uncle Thomas bag. Some of us counter-react and won't "air dirty linen in public" (like our mommas taught us) and stand loyally by our victory and go ape shit at all the criticism (the valid and invalid).
To make matters worse those of us who have fought long and hard in the trenches have to now deal with a bunch of young whipper-snappers who have the audacity to brand us sell-outs or shills or Republicans.
We then go into full "seeing red mode".
Sigh.
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That's what I wrote to try to explain to my brother why sometimes I walk away. Why sometimes when I want to curse and scream - I don't. It's also why I won't leave Daily Kos. Do I lose my patience yes.
Have I uprated or downrated in anger - yes. Do I wind up walking away, Yes.
Do I feel hurt too. Yes.
Do I think we can try to stop this thread guerrilla warfare. Yes.
This is a progressive community. We all have our own definition of progressive. We all have a wide range of views on a broad range of issues. But we all can agree with one basic fact. We are not going to move this country forward alone. We have to do it together.
But as that old black lady cautioned me - we have to have a little more patience with each other.
We can learn to listen, and listen to learn.
Thanks for listening.