The Resegregation Orders (Tell the Stories)
We can heal. We can fight. We are the storytellers.
This post started as a “loosely posted by Friday” research post, but given what my tabs look like this week….I had to talk my shit. Free post, comments welcome. Happy Black History month. Tell the stories.
Last week was a doozy, so this is a little late. The bad news: It is as bad as we thought it would be and worse. The good news: I am slowly starting to see the communications, digital media, and radical media darlings hit the online ground.
So listen: We have to stop shaming folks. The problem isn’t that folks are taking the space and pace they need to process this new moment. Folks need to recover. We (the broad coalition on the left) have fought through T1, COVID, Palestine, and now T2. And that’s just the post-2016 generation. Some of us went to Ferguson. Some of us remember Jena 6. Some of us survived Katrina. We should feel exhausted and we should need a beat. Like damn.
Add to that the direct assault on our alliances, our connections, the appropriation of our commons and comms, the appropriation of our storytelling (woke became “woke”), all means we are fighting back from behind. We (the broad left) lost some of our most important discursive networks this last year. It began with Tumblr, but they slammed us with Twitter becoming X (that was a big battle lost). Meta (Facebook and IG) is basically folding like a house of slick white bro cards.
And still. We have been recovering, rebuilding, shifting, migrating in a Digital Great Migration (thank you Dr. Cooper for the reflection). Regaining ground takes time. And being honest that we are regaining ground also takes time. Took time. Too much time. But here we are. And I love to see the resurgence in action on every platform, in person, on the phone, in the group chats, in the emails from political organizations, in community spaces and classrooms. I LOVE IT, LETS GO.
None of which means we shouldn’t use the platforms. The book I am currently finishing is partly about how radical media, especially networks of radical womyn of color bloggers, saved my life. Allied Media Conference saved my life. Thank you Alexis Pauline Gumbs for this offering on institutional divestment from a Black feminist perspective. Thank you to the Black Creative Worlds seminar for the discussion about imagination last week. Thank you to the other half of my brain, Mark Anthony Neal of Left of Black and New Black Man, who reminds me often that the tools were never the point. The work is the point. Black study is the point. Black freedom is the mandate. Whatever we need to do to get there and whatever tool we need to use to get there is what the fuck we will use.
So tell the stories the way we want them told. Stop calling the anti-DEIA executive orders, bans, work stoppages, research stoppages, and whatever else “rollbacks.” The executive orders are Resegregation Orders. These are attempts to return us to segregation. They are moves straight out of the segregationist playbook. And we need to fight them like that is exactly what they are. And we should be asking businesses, institutions, and politicians: “Do you want to be a segregationist?” Maybe the answer is yes. Then at least we know and we can act accordingly.
And I say these are resegregation attempts, because, again, the future is not written. Don’t concede the future. “Concede nothing,” New Orleans writer and activist Jeri Hilt wrote, reflecting on Hurricane Katrina, “you alone are the reckoning.” This line lives rent free in my head. I quoted it in the introduction to Wicked Flesh, because in seven words, Hilt stands ten toes down in demanding we see disaster, extraction, and legacies of racist violence for what they are. Knowing the segregationists will tell you that “it didn’t hurt,” “it didn’t happen that way,” and, years later, “it didn’t happen.” Concede nothing.
Katrina happened. The disaster capitalism that has attempted, again and again, to destroy Black New Orleans was one of many preludes to the fascism that is happening right now. Katrina happened. María happened. The fires in L.A. are still happening. The two planes that crashed this week happened.
“Concede nothing.” Even now, the essay Hilt wrote that held this gem is unavailable online because Bitch Media folded. And how many of our institutions have paper copies of magazines like Bitch? How many even have paper copies of anything? The link above is in the Wayback Machine. Thank you Internet Archive for existing and predicting this moment.
Copies be damned, we still remember each other. Our connections are the point, the ones we write in text, the ones we write in flesh, the lessons we learn from them, the stories we tell about them. Quoting Hilt was a I spell cast to let a Black New Orleans that has only ever held me down know that I will remain married to you through this life and beyond. It was me saying, I see you. I don’t know you, but I see you. Black women remember each other and will fight for each other when no one else does.
“I see you,” is a magic spell. Cast it.
“Concede nothing,” is a magic spell. CAST IT.
Earlier this week I wrote we create imagination spaces. Well, we also fight like hell for the dead (who are here with us now, as always, fighting alongside us, still speaking, ready to wage war on our behalf). Black history month was NEVER at risk of being canceled. Carter G. Woodson is laughing at us from the grave. Our ancestors created Black History weeks, Black history contests, bibliographies of research about Africans and people of African descent around the world, established entire libraries to set us up with time and space to honor ourselves, our heritage, our journey, and our practice of freedom. No federal, state, or local government gave us permission to do so and we didn’t ask permission.
It is important to have federal recognition of Black life and contributions in the form of holidays and monuments. These things matter because they are pathways towards a larger point. Repair, reparation, forcing institutions to show us mutual respect, and setting in stone what we can so that our children and the unborn can find their way to themselves and to a fighting future is the point. Because we know they will kill us early, fast, and bloody. Creating circumstances where federal and state resources can be used by organizations, schools, universities, and public libraries to acknowledge Africans and people of African descent EXIST and have fought through the worst of empire is the point because we may not be here to pass it on ourselves.
And when you can’t see yourself in the world, you will eat yourself, desperate for nourishment.
The point of Black history is to feed ourselves for the fight, to feed our souls for the material and metaphysical battles ahead. This is why Black history matters. This is why Black studies matters. This is why we do the work we do. Empire doesn’t put a rubber stamp on me or my history. Empire doesn’t cancel me! And I AM the opening act, the headliner, and the afterparty. I AM Black history, and this I is a we. Because I am, we are.
Yes, I left Twitter and I left 30K+ followers behind. I just couldn’t do it anymore. The ads, the promoted tweets, the trending topics, the non-consensual intrusions on my attention. It was divestment, but it was also quality of life. It was also looking for peace, for pace, and for community. So yes, I am an Exoduster. I’m here. I’m also still on IG. I’m also at Bluesky. And I’m building infrastructure and redundancies so that this newsletter is seen as a newsletter, an outpost, not a “substack” (shout-out to
who beats that drum and caused me to think differently about this platform as a result, just in time). Because it is a tool. And I intend to use it like a tool, whether scalpel or sword, because the truth is we are in a fight, right now, today, this minute for our imagination, just as Ruha Benjamin stated. A fight for our stories. And I plan to go out swinging.Choose where you want to be, where you can best fight or recharge for the fight. Choose to be where your people are. We don’t have time to shame folks for using or not using tools, not when we know the kind of sugar they have been putting out for us to consume. We don’t have time to shame anyone for anything anymore.
Whatever you use, wherever you are, analog, digital, metaphysical—tell the stories.
They don’t own our stories. We tell the stories of ourselves and always have. And I’m gonna tell the stories while I’m still here to tell em.
I love this so much 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽