Letter to Black Men:
Arundhati Roy wrote “Revolutions can, and often have, begun with reading.”
In our quest to dismantle systems of oppression, we should look at reading as a form of revolutionary intimacy. Though it can be created between black people across race, gender, and class lines, I wanted to focus primarily on revolutionary intimacy between black women and black men.
Most of us understand reading mostly as a kind of intellectual pursuit. But it also gives us a shared language, history, and strategy. Like our enslaved ancestors passing messages through negro spirituals, a shared education allows us to speak in code. It makes organizing and mobilizing more efficient, because you don’t have to spend precious time and resources (mental, emotional, spiritual or financial) on explaining things.
Dialogue with black women and queer folk is necessary. But asking them to teach us and we aren’t doing the work is unacceptable. Think of the mental and emotional burden we ask black women and queer people to engage in.
Just to give an example: imagine the difference in reaction from a black woman or queer person if you ask a question but preface or caveat it with “I don’t really read all that much” versus “I’ve been reading Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, but I had a question.” If you do the latter, they are more likely to understand that you are coming from a place of good faith; that you are actively trying to do the work, not passively assuming they will teach you. Even if your own knowledge level is inadequate, you have conveyed the minimal level of commitment to their causes.
As black men, we exist in a weird space of being oppressed by racism and benefitting from sexism. Even for those of us who identity with black womanism, there can be a fear of asking the wrong questions or that our efforts to dismantle systems that oppress black women and queer people will be seen as performative. One thing I often struggle with is feeling like black men don’t get extended a certain type of intersectionality. I have some answers, but do still have a lot of questions. But what I have learned from reading black women like bell hooks or Alice Walker or Maya Angelou and others is knowing how, when and why I should de-center myself.
As humans, we all are selfish. I don’t mean it in the negative connotation of the term like stingy or apathetic, but more so that we are concerned with our “self”—our identities, wants, desires, struggles, scars, joys, etc. When are bound in the tenement of our own perspectives.
But that self-centeredness can blind us from what is going on with the folks around us, even the ones we cherish. Black men and women are companions in histories that oppress us. We walk the same path, but black women and queer people have a unique experience with being black that black men don’t have. When we read black women and queer people, we get insight into their experience that we may not have gotten otherwise. We open and become opened.
This de-centering and opening is why reading can be a great act of vulnerability. It can be a useful space for ego death—taking yourself out of the center. And if you are a man that has been or is in any time of relationship (romantic, familial, friendship, etc.), you likely understand that there is no intimacy without vulnerability.
As men, we very much should be ready to be challenged when we crack open black womanist and queer texts. De-centering is a hard process, and the black men willing to engage in it should be ready to have their egos challenged. But opening a book is one of the few activities that provides safety, vulnerability and shows that you have at least done some form of work.
Think of it like being a journalist. As a journalist, if I interviewed a musician and I started asking them a bunch of basic information (Where are you from? How do you pronounce your real name?), the interview may be good, but from the artist’s perspective, it may seem like I didn’t do enough research to prepare for the interview. But if I come with all that information in hand, and mention Track #8 from their first mixtape ten years ago, it shows them that I did the work. I invested my time and effort to learn about who they are and why they do what they do. When black men read, it shows black women and queer people that we (at least) care.
Reading is not a panacea, a universal problem-solver. But it is a great first step in radical transformation — from ego to sympathy to empathy to solidarity. When we are stuck in ego, we are blind to the plight of black women and queer people. Sympathy makes us feel bad for our struggle, but doesn’t spur us to action. Empathy means we identify with their trials as if they are our own, but still haven’t arrived in revolutionary formation yet. But solidarity is a radical commitment to tearing down the systems that bog down these groups, regardless of our proximity to them.
In our quest to be better black men to the black community, opening a book is a powerful tool in this process.
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Joshua Adams