My mom wants to meet you. Because ever since I asked you to give me the right way to say your name I have been singing it around the house
I think about you when you wrote about nationality and how it relates to the silencing of the voices of women of color and the violence imposed on our bodies.
And then also the comments on this thread here.
and I wanted to sit with them .
Cause on my first reading I really didn't appreciate the comments.
And i thought about the time I took my hiatus and how I hoped to reevaluate my critiquing and to be truly critical and not just responsive and focus on my sisters of color
And I said you name they way it should be said
And then
I REALLY DIDN'T FUCKING LIKE IT!
I thought the concentrating on you would make me less volatile but it didn't .
ESPECIALLY because of your position as a blogger and as a WOC and as a WOC blogger part of population that goes often unmentioned by even the most "enlightened" people
and add on the fact I love and adore you
Straight up I'm hot.
What annoyed me about the post is the very very salient point you bring up here:
most people in this world have a national identity that was entirely invented and forced upon them by colonizers. Who drew those lines on the map? Who constructed and named those countries? Uh huh.
And the ensuing replies that are sophomoric and point missing in the most predictable of ways. The boorish proselytizing and the " reasoned" measured responses. It amuses me and by amuses me I mean " makes me wanna holler" in frustration at the fact that testimony from the affected is treated as secondary to reasoned debate. It also amuses me that the constant response to someone pointing out injustice and inequality and subhuman circumstances is the ever so smug
" What do your propose?"
How bout I propose mothers being able to work to feed their babies and get proper utilities and that any structure that prevents that and leads to DEATH destruction and forced displacement is wrong and no frankly I don't give a shit about your semantic argument?
It's not an innocent intellectual exercise , it's a subtle reenforcement of the belief that this is the best possible option and if the people most abused cant come up with a better one then really shouldn't they shut up about it cause there really just making noise .
And I'll leave the special special individual who went but OTHER FOLKS DO IT TOO AND IT'S BEEN DONE SO NAH!
As if injustice is inevitable but the fight against it is not. As if these scenarios he brings about aren't ALSO inevitably challenged the way you challenge this accepted belief in a right to nationality, or as one poster brought up the unseen and unmentioned benefits and protections of this nationality that when denied completely unmoor and hurt Palestinians women ESPECIALLY
And as for the Racialicious thread. I was pretty and uniformly pissed.
While there is a demonstrated concern about the Islamo Facist Week I find more concerning the LACK of analysis of the role media plays in SILENCING the people who would speak out against it.
It's not JUST about the drum beats of war , it is also about the fact that there is even an EXPECTATION that an entire religion produce an answer to this main stream onslaught iusing
THE VERY SAME MEDIA
The very idea that there is nothing challenging the idea, to me , is a farce.
Which is why I Didn't respond there as I couldn't get past it.
The particular need for guidance or the " no easily accessible information" ENFURIATES ME.
Islamo Fascist week is the latest in a LITANY or anti arab anti muslim attacks many of which often lead to the DISAPPEARANCE of people., maybe just maybe it is not among AN ENTIRE RELIGIONS mind to provide information , as *gasp* their may not be a muslim opinion to give.
And the use of the Blackout without an explanation or the discussion at all of how certain protests are started and publicized and treated as if they are gospel activity without any REAL ENGAGEMENT Of the community the propose to support( yes I am bitter about it ask me why later)
being used to criticize a religion for not necessarily addressing what is essentially *same shit different day this time with flyers *
but seriously I was willing to let it go
UNTIL I GOT TO THE TONE THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, just for future reference, I was really angry when I initally read your first response. To me, it came off as very flip and dismissive. These phrases in particularI understand the intent behind your words a lot better now. But the tone and word choices you used in your first points really turned me off to what you were trying to say.
Trust me, I know that things are easily misinterpreted online, so a quick response can be easily construed other ways.
But considering the views you share are important, I am bringing this to your attention. It is up to you to decide what you want to do with this information but I really feel that people need to tread a bit more lightly with how we speak to each other. And Nadia, obviously, this isn’t just directed at you - it happens a lot, all over the blogosphere. (especially on this blog.)
I’m sure you didn’t intend the words as harshly as I interpreted them. Still, I appreciate when people tell me how I could have improved my message and made it more clear. I hope that you are receptive to the same thing.
And see even a month off and mediation can't make me behave.
Bump that noise how's that for tone. Mind you I have no problem with the author but that .
That was enfuriating to me ESPECIALLY during the week of red. So explaining a concept to her that SHE ADMITS TO KNOWING NOTHING ABOUT and acknowledges as a truth requires you to adjust your tone?!
What message are you trying to spread that I missed. Besides the addressing of a virulent and constant accepted strain of anti arab sentiment? Did I miss something ?
I think the non examination of the factors that lead to the SILENCING of ARAB voices ( which oddly enough are the same factors that allow for wars on arab americans to go un challenged but hey that's just me)
That's not your blog a but it is YOUR LIFE. So instead your a chastised publicly and indelicately for an essential agreement for not " treading lightly" ( plus the insinuation that you were quick and unthinking as i know you YEAH NO)
and here's where I relate it to Silencing.
Even in "liberal circles' we are frequently asked to modulate our tone and subscribe to an accepted mode of communication that we have neither agreed to nor do we support. We are asked to consider intent and word choice for the consumption of others even when they demonstrate little to no concern to do the same for us if we are not "intended audience"
We do not need to tread more lightly ESPECIALLY since those who are asked to tread lightly always seem to be the ones for whom this isn't an academic exercise BUT a life experience. " turned me off to what you were trying to say?!' That usually indicated an unwillingness to listen unless catered to and also presents a glaring privilege of BEING ABLE TO BE TURNED OFF
( as soon as you can be turned off of hearing the latest anti arab anti islam fear mongering you let me I 'll throw a party)
The blogosphere has replicated again and again while purporting to challenge that because it is a written sphere and it is a technological sphere it is automatically governed my middle class "polite values"
SO here's what I've decide to do with this information
One I took it off that post because if I am going to be asked to " tread carefully" when discussing PERSONAL LIFE SPECIFIC experience even when I am considerate and non offensive in my language and armed with you know FACTS, is probably going to degenerate.
Cause I'm a hot head.
And secondly
I am going to personally ask you Nadia
NOT TO CHANGE A DAMN THING
We don't need to tread lightly . Some of us have had to tread lightly and be afraid of announcing our true lived experiences for so long for simple SURVIVAL . Tread lightly to me means nothing . What is needed is consideration and actual examination of what "people" we are asking and why. And also what this light treatment hopes to achieve. Because the honest discussion of the forces that subjugate,silence and choke the ability of people to express their truths and frustrations..?
Is only for those who can afford to watch and wait.
Yep I was much hotter about that than i thought I was
Love you girl
BA
11 comments:
BA, I'm with you 100%. I tend to come from the school of, "Fuck tone, gimme reality." Indeed, a raw tone may even say something about that reality, whereas politesse and parlor manners are usually designed to disguise unpleasantness from the tender ears of an oppressor class. In my world, the best tone is called "telling the truth"; and if you miss it, it's because you weren't genuinely listening.
Nez has dubbed this common tactic The Drowning Maestro.
Nadia, your tone is perfect, just keep saying what you say and doing what you do.
Peace.
"We don't need to tread lightly . Some of us have had to tread lightly and be afraid of announcing our true lived experiences for so long for simple SURVIVAL . Tread lightly to me means nothing . What is needed is consideration and actual examination of what "people" we are asking and why. And also what this light treatment hopes to achieve. Because the honest discussion of the forces that subjugate,silence and choke the ability of people to express their truths and frustrations..?
Is only for those who can afford to watch and wait."
That's it, all of it, right there. It's easier not to scream when your bed isn't the one that's burning. Your people aren't the ones that are dying or being arrested. Conflict to conflict, you'll find the ones that are speaking softly are already the ones armed with the big sticks and striking at the knees of their conversation partners. And then they complain because the debate field is level? The fuck kind of logic is that?
they think the debate field is level*
I need to wake up, haha.
mhm mhm mhm
BAs gots to be reading my mind. I was actually going to be putting up a pro Nadia post on my blog as well...you'll have to wait and see what my post is about
oh, btw
yeah
FUCK tone.
FYI -
1. I posted an apology to Nadia. It's over on Racialicious, though her third comment isn't up yet. On the real, I really did not mean the criticism as a "hush and be civil" thing. I meant it in the "I hear you, I care about your message, here's the reactions I got, do what you like with it."
However, Nadia was right in saying that prejudice probably painted my reaction much more than I was aware of.
2. Personally, I like the idea of truth telling. But I don't think that reality is always conveyed through harsh tone. It is much more of a concern in the gaming activist world and the religious activist world than it is in the racial activist world, but a concern to me none the less.
But suffice it to say, I see the points made.
Point taken. And apology extended.
Hi Latoya welcome to HRTFP,
Thank you for coming, always like to have new folks. I would like to address your two points in the best way I can, and as disspasionately a s I can manage. I am more than willing to admit my personal attachment to Nadia colored my reaction and I ma not sorry for that but that's not what i Want to discuss here.
To your first point , that's between you and Nadia, my reaction was posted on this blog for that very reason.While It is the internet and I included the link so if anybody was interested they could read it. I did not include in the thread BECAUSE I did not want it to be come a discussion of whose defending who and who gets salty first. It avoids the content of the message which is the very thing I had a problem with .
Also you talk about what you MEANT, while in your own comment you talk about what Nadia SAID , and later what you interpreted AFTER you gave her another reading.
Regardless of your intent you use of flip and dismissive and talking about your feelings was essentially redirecting the discussion form what she wrote to the way she wrote it . And it WASN'T just another poster it was the special correspondent of the blog in question essentially redirecting the comment flow to tell her how her speech was problematic.
AT that point whatever you meant or whatever your good intentions , what is recorded is the fact that you felt it necessary to tell someone how she should be and were a ok in admitting that because it wasn't that way the first time you nearly shut down .
And you did it in public. That message could have been conveyed in private but you felt it was necessary to do in public. You made a public example of her.
and that as i keep saying cause that's the only way i can describe it.
Got me hot. Because as WOC blogger as an arab blogger as a female blogger I have watched that ish happen to her more times than I am at all comfortable with. And the fact you didn't mean harm doesn't make it any less hurtful .OR any less of a diversionary tactic
2) I am perturbed by your concentration on the use of the word harsh because once again you center your personal reaction to the words instead of the feelings of the writer . WHich is essentially what you are asking Nadia and me to forgive you on.
WHat about the fact that as you have admitted to observing , the possibility that her tone isn't harsh but hurt by this constant demand on her community or exasperated by the sheer prejudice and racism in combating these tropes ? OR matter of fact taht this expectation is both patently false and racist?
What is centered instead is how YOU felt about hearing her truth instead of the real effects of having such a truth to tell .
Reality of experience is reality of experience and some of what people go through is harsh. And it is regardless of intent a common and colonizing power play to ask them to modulate it for the appreciation of peopel who never have to think about it.
And frankly as someone whose tone is usually and squarely aiming for brash if not straight up neck popping mouthy . To see that tactic used on NAdia in what seemed like an up front straight up recommendation disquieted me.
Hope to hear form you
BA
Also, christ I hate invoking so-commonly-cited-that-you-are-being-trite-to-mention-them people, but he is the first person who popped into my head:
When I see/hear clips of Malcolm X's speaking, I feel ignited; and when I read BA and many other bloggers who kick ass, I feel safety being increased in the world as a direct result of their attitudes. Their tones are not simply understandable or allowable or appropriate to the situations at hand - their tones are essential. Their tones say things that need to be heard as much as their words do.
I am not concerned about who may not be able to hear the message because the manner in which it was delivered is off-putting to their sensitivities.
I am concerned about who may not be able to hear the message because they/we needed fire and instead got damp cover.
thanks for posting this, not only cause i fucking love nadia but because of the way dominant culture has constantly used this tactic to try to shame us into silence and no one has really called them out on it. "your views are too out there." "you're too angry." "you're not being polite, we can handle this in a nice political way."
i'm not well read or anything but there is nothing more absolutetly power-stealing than trying to embarrass people into silence.
*waves excitedly*
WElcome misscripchick!
How about this for tone?
Latoya, even your apology sucks ass.
That is all.
You know...yeah.
There's a difference between "raw tone" and "refusal to engage." (i.e. the sort of shutdown g-m-r pulls. but then Blanche does it too, and she's "polite," more or less).
recently I got a bit of a slap upside the head with this, with this post, or more specifically the commenter "tim" who came in toward the end. I think we all thought he'd be hopeless. We were "harsh." He threatened not to come back; we were all, "bye, then." He did come back. His choice. I did then dial back the snark a bit when he seemed like he was starting to listen a bit more. But there was no "polite," I don't think.
And at the end of it all?
said...
I don't think further comment on my part can bring anything to the discussion. But suffice it to say, you've convinced me.
October 30, 2007 3:07 PM
So, yeah.
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