whoosh

Quote

In my house this year we are celebrating the feast of Kwanza, the African-American festival of harvest which begins the day after Christmas and lasts for seven days. There are seven principles of Kwanza, one for each day. The first principle is Umoja, which means unity, the decision to strive for and maintain unity in self and community. The principle for yesterday, the second day, was Kujichagulia—self-determination—the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others. Today is the third day of Kwanza, and the principle for today is Ujima—collective work and responsibility—the decision to build and maintain ourselves and our communities together and to recognize and solve our problems together.

–

Audre Lorde ([1977] 1980) ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.’ in The Cancer Journals. Aunt Lute Books, p. 22.

Feministx quoted six words from this essay in their open-letter(?)/manifesta(?)/thing. This selection shows just how thoroughly appropriators of Audre Lorde have to de-racialize her work in order to bend it to their purposes. (Even with that in mind, feministx went a shocking and embarrassing extreme in shoe-horning Lorde into their statement—just completely warping the meaning of even the tiny amount of her writing that they took out of context.) It reveals the inability of white feminists to work outside of a binary of Black/white, singular/universal. Blackness is just too particular, we have to de-Black the Black feminists to put their work to work.

(via james-bliss)

Via come on up to the house

19 notes Posted on Tuesday February 28th