Carolina QuotesNotice how all the labor considered feminine is also expected to be free or low cost
Bree Newsome Carolinian
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May 11 2022 on Twitter
- year
- 2022
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“Notice how all the labor considered feminine is also expecte…” Bree Newsome. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-73AA5BF08D. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/73aa5bf08d
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There’s power in naming our heroes and lifting them up. We don’t have many monuments to Black people or women—especially Black women—like, anywhere. If it weren’t significant, then it wouldn’t be an issue, right? I remember when people were like, “Oh, don’t just put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill—what is that doing? How does that address capitalism?” That’s true, but at the same time, if it didn’t have any power, then they wouldn’t have any problem with doing it. The reason that they don’t do that is because they don’t want people thinking about this revolutionary figure. Imagine if every time you saw a $20 bill, you saw Harriet Tubman and you’re reminded of slavery. You’re reminded of how we’re still struggling. There’s value in it, but I don’t want us to over-prioritize that above addressing the material conditions of our people—because, again, what the establishment will do is say, “OK, yeah, we’re going to take down a Columbus statue, put up a Harriet Tubman statue, take down this statue, put up a Frederick Douglass statue,” [and] that will become the project while people are still homeless. People are still not going to have living wages, and that [ends up] becoming the new neoliberal project.
A major disconnect between the people and the politics is one of the things that the housing crisis has made even clearer. There are millions of people facing eviction right now, and from the way that these politicians are acting around this issue, you would not think they saw the same thing. I think it just shows how this is something that doesn't touch them—they have health care, they have housing, you know what I mean? They’re so disconnected from the reality of how many other people are living, I don’t think that they really recognize just how wide that wealth inequality is. The politicians are generally not able to respond because they’re so disconnected from that experience.
A feature of the modern movement has been an open rejection of “respectability politics”—the notion that black Americans must prove themselves “respectable” to gain equal rights. Iconic images from the 1960s show young people dressed in their finest while police dogs bite them or fire hoses knock them flat. The day before our protest in Raleigh, the reverend reminded us of this tradition and encouraged us to maintain it. But some of my colleagues raised a question: Wasn’t Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated while wearing a suit? The idea that changing our clothes would change our circumstances was troubling. Many pundits suggested that Trayvon had been killed not because of racism but because he’d been wearing a hoodie. And so wearing T‑shirts, jeans, and hoodies to protests became an intentional act of rejecting “respectability,” instead of trying to look wealthy and white.