Delma Jackson III

Delma Jackson III · August 2, 2021 ·

Rage was never a thing I had easy access to.

In the staggeringly stereotypical tradition of “ol’ school,” Black parents, emotional outbursts were not tolerated and suppressing any rage was always preferable to censure. Positionality was key. I had my position, and I played my part. I learned quickly that I got much further with my parents with reasoned, well-timed questions and demonstrable fealty.

However, as I became increasingly politicized in undergrad, my rage blossomed and found a righteous home. It’s the little stories–the off-hand anecdotes that stuck with me. It’s not just the source material that changes you. It’s also the one-offs and the “by the ways.”

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It’s learning about the hundreds of postcards circulating throughout the US with “I wish you were here” printed on one side and photos of lynchings decorating the other.

It’s learning that dysentery killed so many of us on the transatlantic voyage that tubs were installed to save more lives (read: investments). It’s learning that children often risked (and presumably some succumbed to) drowning^[1] in these tubs full of the human waste of their fellow captives because their legs were too short to brace themselves in the often turbulent waters.

It’s learning the story of Mary Turner, who in 1918 dared to speak out against the lynching of her husband. On May 19, 1918, the day after her husband was lynched, the mob sought to “teach her a lesson.”^[2] A mob took her to “a lonely and secluded spot…near Folsom’s Bridge.”^[3] Mary Turner, who was 8 months pregnant, was hung upside down by her ankles to an oak tree. After which:

“gasoline and oil from the automobiles were thrown on her clothing and while she writhed in agony and the mob howled in glee, a match was applied and her clothes burned from her person…and while she was yet alive, a knife, evidently one such as is used in splitting hogs, was taken and the woman’s abdomen was cut open, the unborn babe falling from her womb to ground. The infant, prematurely born, gave two feeble cries and then its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel. Hundreds of bullets were then fired into the body of the woman….”^[4]

These are the stories that changed me forever. They are the anecdotes that stick with me forever. They are one side of a bloody, brutal bridge which connects the past to the present wherein viral videos of police brutality/murder form the opposite end.

It’s watching the indifference to another child killed in the visage of Tamir Rice who SO resembles Emmet Till*…as though the soul of an ancestor is doomed to relive racialized violence over and again. My continuous intimacy with these images—the accompanying scholarship, and the never-ending news cycles of state-sanctioned violence–accompanied by the realization that this history was kept from me throughout my K-12 education–renders me bitter.

Herein lies the precarious space I occupy. While I love the work I do, I’m often invited into spaces where people ask for culture change when what they actually want is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This now-ubiquitous acronym is just close enough to the mark as to leave me all-the-more bitter…rageful. The ascendancy of DEI embodies everything I resent about our industrialized, assembly-lined, capitalistic system. The same is true for sensitivity training, cultural competency, and echo chamber courageous conversations.

To be clear, CWC does NOT do DEI work. If we did, they’d be doing it without me.

DEI work rarely asks white people to embrace their full humanity— humiliation, fear, frustration, and/or fury. These processes are designed to allow a psychological distance–an internal safe-space wherein silence and a sign-in sheet co-conspire to convey completion without confession, conscious raising, or catharsis. This reality becomes more obvious In the age of Covid-induced zoom trainings. I’ve found myself conveying historical and contemporary tragedies, pouring out my heart and soul to black screens with names and (sometimes) accompanying gender pronouns (because that’s a box easily-enough checked whether you truly appreciate the significance or not).

Working in predominantly white spaces to discuss white supremacy and other components of identity politik comprises the bulk of my work. While it feels like a vocation (and every calling has its less-than-ideal components), it is a draining one…often an enraging one. Every docile, sheepish, impassive face is a reminder of everything I hate about this work. I’m not “allowed” to be pissed at your indifference–the very indifference that gave rise to the need for these conversations in the first place.

I was taught to never use the word hate lightly.

However…

I hate injustice. You seem to hate discussing it.

I hate that we’re dying. You seem to hate the guilt you feel from thinking about it.

I want change so that I can be left alone in peace, you want the status-quo so you can be left alone. That makes it hard not to hate you.

What I hate most, is that eliminating your discomfort remains prioritized. DEI and other modalities largely embraced by the public are mechanized–designed for mass-production without mass-backlash–passivity prioritized over possibility. While I’ve made it clear to any and all I work with that I don’t do traditional DEI work, the often unspoken expectation is often that participants will be able to remain comfy-cozy in the face of brutality. Participants too often want solutions without soul-searching. They want to see the world change without having to change themselves. They want the equity equation–a set of explicit directions that will allow them to be on the “right” side of history without risking anything.

This further fuels my rage, and I’m not even clear about what my ask is…in part because I often believe you’re incapable of meeting it. Asking a depleted soul to feel something for others when they have a hard time connecting to themselves is a big ask.

Either way, it’s painful to watch you grapple at the space where your ignorance and comfort fight for territory against the impending guilt and growing discomfort that comes with facing hard truths. Or you attach “meaningful” to “outcomes” as though this whole exploration is only worth your time if there’s a prize at the bottom of the box. Your orientation to check something off a box only extends to the external world around you, but there is little enthusiasm for checking off the boxes in the universe within you. I suspect if I could give you a list of things to do to avoid being “perceived” as racist, you’d happily take it and never do anything to address who you actually are.

Do you honestly believe that who you are doesn’t matter? That you should be able to do this work without touching something inside yourself that yearns to be free? Perhaps. But I suspect there’s more to it than that…

I can spend so much time staring at a blank screen, attempting to figure out how to talk about something which has been discussed so often and by far better minds than my own. Yet, so long as the ignorance-induced-indifference of some, the benign neglect of many, and the outright hostility of still others continues to permeate the social landscape of this nation, I suppose the observers must continue to watch and alchemize the often intangible into something held, felt, and eventually, if we’re lucky, grappled with.

When organizations ask for culture change and the individuals within said organization realize they don’t know where this work will take them—because they don’t know where they are—they get nervous. They hide behind the organizations “need for clearly-defined outcomes” and beg for answers the way one clutches for twigs after a ship capsizes. They want all the nuances laid bare and plain. They want to feel better. They haven’t even begun the work in earnest and they’re already falling apart. Group agreements like, “expect and accept non-closure” are logically understood yet emotionally abandoned.

At times, these spaces feel like daycares full of ill-tempered, passive-aggressive toddlers. And despite their temperament and lack of life experience, they’re ostensibly trying. So…I show up—in all my rage—and prepare to hold their hand even as I know I can never go back and hold the hands of all my ancestors and contemporaries who could’ve used it far more–not to simply feel soothed, but to survive.

*I chose NOT to include a trigger warning precisely because I never got one upon entering my body, my African American Studies courses, or my daily life. I wanted my readers unprepared because that is ALWAYS part of the trauma…to know a thing logically, but to remain always woefully unprepared….

^[1] See: The Life of Olaudah Equiano [1789] (Dover Thrift Edition), p.53
^[2] “The Work of a Mob.” Crisis Magazine, September 1918, pp. 221-223
^[3] Ibid
^[4] Ibid

Delma Jackson is a Senior Fellow with CWC. His focus is on facilitating system change on campuses and in institutions through transformative practice and the power of story. He received his undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Psychology, and his Masters in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. He regularly lectures on a variety of socio-political topics with a special emphasis on intersectional approaches to social justice.

Delma Jackson III · May 25, 2021 ·

Last week I posted my completed Pfizer card on FB.

I wanted to let everyone know that I had gotten my 2nd vaccine. The meta-message: I’m responsible, I’m relatively safer now, be like me and get some.

I posted my completed Pfizer card on FB because I was considering the relatively narrow cultural context in which I typically operate–a country in which there are people who continue to refuse vaccination on both sides of the political spectrum for a host of reasons–some complex, some overtly asinine. I wanted to speak to them all. I wanted to say to those on the asinine side of the political spectrum that it’s time we stopped treating facts like “build-a-bears” and get on the same goddamn page. For those who are aware of medicine’s nefarious history, I wanted to encourage them to both never forget, while calling them into a community space that places our collective health over our individual fears.

Meanwhile…I had taken a break from the news. Coming off the Trump years of constant analysis, fact-checking, meaning making, and constantly engaging talking heads, I’ve spent the last few months engaging more Wu-Tang, Evan Winter, and Winter Soldier than NPR. I watched the Chauvin trial only as it concluded, and beyond that, I was fairly checked out. So when my colleague, Kavi Rao lamented what was going on in India and elsewhere around the world, I had to google it.

THIS is when and how my intersecting interests in social justice, pop-culture, current events, and historical context creates an infuriatingly complex stew in the very soul of my bone marrow. This is when the questions come up that have no answers. Above all, this is when I am most keenly aware that I live in massa’s house.

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I posted my completed Pfizer card on FB without once considering how I was fighting a cultural war sans acknowledging the humanitarian / socio-political crisis right in front of me. While I was posting, I failed to consider the people all over the world who would love to post their card but can’t because there’s little-to-no access. I was fronting for the camera, seeking to contribute to the normalization of vaccination in the US, without regard for the normalization of access that comes with living in the US.

Living in massa’s house, I get massa’s scraps and thus have access before many on the larger plantation. My inability to hold that fact in front of me at all times renders me…less. Less compassionate, less human, less connected, less humane…like Chauvin himself.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the myriad of ways that choosing to post my completed Pfizer card is nothing like Chauvin choosing to kneel on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes. I am not speaking to my actions v. his. I am speaking to the mindset that informs them–a mindset that many of us share even as the actions we take can vary greatly. I draw this comparison for the same reason King explained the heart of every Black protest from the March on Washington to the formation of BLM Plaza: “to dramatize a shameful condition.” Otherwise, we constantly risk being beset by a narrowing world-view in moments wherein the culture war immediately in front of us can blind us to the larger complexities in the world beyond our immediate purview.

He wasn’t practicing protocol, he was likewise fronting for the camera. He had chosen sides in a culture war and used Floyd’s Black body as a pedestal upon which to trophy-ize himself (think: big game hunters) and demonstrate his domination and thus his allegiances. He knew that precedent was on his side, for not only did he live in massa’s house– he was among massa’s favorite children.

Whenever I seek to demonstrate my side of the ongoing culture wars here in the US without taking into account the global context in which I operate, I too kneel upon the necks of billions who would, if able, declare their choices just as boldly were access, and thus choices, an option.

I am speaking to the indifference of distance. I am physically distant and thus more readily indifferent to the plight of India, Brazil, and South Africa. Chauvin was psychologically distant, and thus, more readily indifferent to the plight of George Floyd. And even while we’re both surrounded by the pleas of witnesses, our distance renders us both insulated from their urgency and the end result is the same: death.

Three days after the Chauvin verdict was handed down, I caught the season finale of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and I had SO many feels. ***SPOILERS AHEAD***

Anthony Mackie (a Black actor) is the new Captain America (“Cap”). Cap’s monologue toward the end of the episode could have easily been for the Bill Gateses and the mega-pharma companies of the world, whose relative inaction on vaccine distribution remains mired in patent debates. Cap argues that there’s “a common struggle now,” wherein people are “begging for you to feel how hard any given day is” because we are collectively facing “a force so powerful, it could erase half the planet.”

Similarly, when Cap was told he simply didn’t understand the complexity of responding to global crisis, I was reminded of the complexity inherent in holding the impacts and implications of global crisis while being Black in the US–both the empathy and indifference it can spur–as he responded, “I’m a Black man carrying the stars and stripes. What don’t I understand?” It is in this land of immense power and wealth that I have been shaped. I am therefore not immune (nor should I be), to the “millions of people who are going to hate me for it…the stares, the judgement.” And yet, like Cap, “I’m still here.”

To live in massa’s house and lose sight of the plantation, even for a second, is perhaps the greatest single indictment of cultural hegemony’s allure, AND of our individual failings which allow it to thrive. Since my initial awakening to the impacts of cultural hegemony on members across the African diaspora, I’ve had mixed feelings about my American identity. I am painfully aware that while we’ve been here for over four centuries, we were never meant to be citizens in the eyes of the colonizers.

So long as I live here in the US, I have a responsibility to fight the good fight at home and abroad–to use my voice to raise awareness within these borders and beyond them. To lose sight of the global context in which I operate, while accessing the resources that global kleptocracy provides, is to narrow my world-view in ways that contribute to the death of billions.

Because my choice to post my vaccine status is encouraged, I will not be tried by a jury of my peers. In fact, I’ll get a LOT of likes ‘n’ hearts. However, there are juries of public opinion all over the world that may feel both glad to see another person vaccinated, but also enraged by my apparent indifference to their plight.

Yet all is not lost. I write this both as catharsis and clarion, a collective call to raise awareness through our own channels of influence and social engagement. Like Cap, I come to this fight with “no super serum. No blonde hair or blue eyes.” Like Cap, the “only power I have is that I believe we can do better.” Moving forward, I’ll strive to do better. I’ll strive to remember what it means to live on the plantation–particularly because I live in massa’s house. I’ll strive to remember the world beyond the plantation and name that world so far removed from the resources and norms by which I am both marred and bolstered.

To live in America as a so-called minority is to know the worst of the best. Water, water everywhere and only a few drops to drink. It’s easy to forget that for many others, the water is still harder to come by. As long as that’s true, we’re all the worse for it. As long as we name it, we can see it, and potentially do something about it….

Delma Jackson, III is a Senior Fellow with CWC. His focus is on facilitating system change on campuses and in institutions through transformative practice and the power of story. He received his undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Psychology, and his Masters in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. He regularly lectures on a variety of socio-political topics with a special emphasis on intersectional approaches to social justice.

Delma Jackson III · January 18, 2021 ·

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
-Virginia Woolf, The Moment and other Essays, 1947)

A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Abraham Lincoln, Illinois senatorial acceptance speech, 1858

We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking to Harry Belafonte, circa 1968

America, I just checked my following list, and…You mothafuckas owe me
Childish Gambino, This is America, 2018

In light of this year’s MLK Day and the recent terror attacks on the Capitol, I thought I would continue in the tradition of Tubman, Baldwin, Hamer, and King. I thought I would offer an honest observation of the nation I think of as both a home and a prison…

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On January 6, 2021, US citizen-terrorists (terrorzens?) broke into what was, ostensibly, their own house: ravenously looted and destroyed symbols of democracy; sought out specific lawmakers for vigilante justice; and demanded the immediate end to the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

For the first time in the history of the republic, technology facilitated a global watch party: front row seats to a republic that would sooner burn itself to the ground than allow for the peaceful replacement of a white supremacist, would-be dictator. Like so many, I watched it all in real-time. Malcolm X’s observation on the assassination of JFKennedy immediately came to mind: “The chickens” had, yet again, “come home to roost.”

Sooooo, I took note when Slate Magazine recently published two headlines that I found profoundly typical and incomplete:

“Republicans are tough on terrorism until the terrorists are Republicans”

“Republicans have an insurrectionist caucus”

Full disclosure: I have not yet read these articles, and while I’ve come to expect good, nuanced writing from the folks over at Slate, these headlines are problematic on the surface because, in my humble opinion, they skirt a larger, uglier, and much older issue.

Republicans are not the sole problem. White America at large is the problem. White Americans are tough on terror until the terrorist is white. White America has, and has always had, an insurrectionist caucus.

One could argue, therefore, that America is, at its core, an insurrectionist caucus.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote “All men are created equal,” on territory stolen from the Lenape people only 13 years earlier, and James Madison facilitated the Three-Fifths Compromise, the foundations of insurrection were more firmly planted. The lofty ideas of democracy, rule of law, liberty, and justice were drafted in the backdrop of massacre, thievery, chattel slavery, kleptocracy, and white supremacy.

From its inception, the US required white America to ride a spiked fence post–forever teetering between these warring realities–to never pick a side, but rather, to live in a constant, amorphous cognitive dissonance driven by two world views that never require real commitment to one or the other. America’s genuine exceptionalism is thus rooted in making exceptions for its loftier values rather than reaching for them in earnest.

The nation has always capitulated to its base nature–via the Missouri Compromise (1820), The Fugitive Slave Act (1850), The Dred Scott Case (1857), Plessy v Ferguson (1896), all the way through the 2013 repeal of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, just to name a few.

As Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw brilliantly pointed out, in the context of the contested election of 1876/1877, for example, President Hayes removed federal troops from the south in exchange for the formal recognition of his presidency from southern Democrats. The compromise ended Reconstruction in the south and paved the way for duly elected Black officials and their supporters across the south to be “killed in political violence” through “…coups across the south.”

In 1877, and for every decade to come, coups and other forms of political violence/suppression are largely tolerated in the American body-politic because the violence is perpetrated against non-white bodies. In 2021, the failed coup attempt and its apparent toleration vis-a-vis the relative lack of violence happened, in part, because the primary actors were white bodies.

America tolerates political violence, both in the name of the state and against the state–so long as everyone involved is white.

Let’s be clear, the US has never known what to do when the “other” is the self. Never forget, the Civil War was white supremacy fighting itself for economic and political dominance.

Slavery in and of itself did not start the Civil War. The south attacked Fort Sumter and sought to secede from the Union. Violence was perpetrated by a white supremacist culture of chattel slavery that would not be appeased until its tentacles could reach from sea to shining sea. Likewise, this violence was also perpetrated against a culture of white supremacy, one that forced the union to stand but never forced an end to its core tenets, policies, procedures, or cultural products.

Why would it? In white supremacy, there was profound agreement. Thus, the north allowed–even encouraged– the south to build temples to the lost cause, wave a traitorous flag, make demands for segregation in the highest courts of the land, and find them supported. Infiltrate every American public school with your revisionist histories and tell the story of the “lost cause” just as you’d like. So long as white supremacy is centered–we stand united.

From legislative policies like the 3/5 Compromise to an officer’s enthusiastic and intimate capitulation to terrorism via selfies in 2021, to media outlets’ painstakingly slow shift toward accurate language to describe the insurrection before our very eyes–never forget, January 6, 2021 was white supremacy fighting itself over voter franchisment.

So as I watched the footage of a Black man single-handedly face down a gaggle of white terrorists and reroute them away from the Senate floor, I had two immediate thoughts. First, he was placing his Black body on the line to protect an institution which has only had 11 Black members since 1776. Secondly, I wondered if any of his white colleagues let those terrorists inside to begin with.

One of the greatest single indictments of the U.S. that American’s often utter in moments like this, goes: “This is not who we are.” This is exactly who you are.

There’s a reason post-WWII Germany didn’t ask for “unity” with the Nazi party. There’s a reason the US didn’t ask for “unity” with l-Qaeda after 9/11. Asking for unity assumes there are “very good people on both sides.” On January 6, 2021, US terror-zens ceased “standing back and standing by.” They showed up and showed out.

Don’t even bother asking me to unify with them. Da fuck? I come from a long line of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and LGBTQ+ folks who actually take the founding documents at face value, despite having every reason not to. So long as I (and/or other members of the global majority) live on this land, I’ll have the same request of America that King articulated in his final speech: “…be true to what you said on paper.”

Writing Soundtrack:

“This is America” – Childish Gambino

“The Magic Carpet” – Jazzinuf

“Les Fleurs” – Minnie Ripperton

“Equinox” – John Coltrane

Delma Jackson III · November 13, 2020 ·

You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link. This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link. To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam. To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
—Khalil Gibran

When considering Black/Indigenous solidarity, I consider ways our collective histories can serve as a magnet, for better and for worse. They can pull us together or repel us, depending on which side is facing outward at any given moment–our healing selves or our re-traumatized selves….

On any given day, I can oscillate between these less-than-distinct versions of myself. My personal traumas and triumphs dance continuously with one another–a spiral rivaling the very Milky Way in scope and scale. When I consider this, I’m reminded of RW Emerson when he writes: “Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.”

When our personal dance of trauma and triumph is compounded by community, we must be forgiven and forgiving when we trip over our own feet in the quest for an intentional community.

This is often easier said than done–for when our trauma is front and center, our capacity for forgiveness is greatly diminished, if not outright forfeit. Per Maslow, when we don’t feel safe, the self-actualization necessary to forgive can feel practically unobtainable.

To complicate matters further, “safety” is a subjective, ever-moving goalpost. As any facilitator can attest to, one person’s sense of safety can vacate another’s. Our sense of safety is rooted in both individual and collective experiences. Given that we all show up with differing hearts, there is no one-pacemaker-fits-all approach.

All of this came to a head for me in the context of Afro-Indigenous solidarity as I was driving the other day. I was listening to an episode of 1A on NPR wherein journalist/host Jenn White welcomed award-winning authors Stephen Graham Jones and Darcie Little Badger to discuss sci-fi through the voices of Indigenous authors.

At one point in the interview, Ms. White, invited Ms. Little Badger to reflect on how she’d define the “genre” of her writing–noting that while they’d been using the term “speculative fiction” throughout the interview, the question remained of how best to define her work. Ms. Little Badger briefly reflected on her upcoming work before noting that she’s found the term “Indigenous futurism” helpful.

I felt my heart sink.

I found myself waiting on Ms. White to ask if there was a connection between that term and Afrofuturism.^[1] In short, I wanted to feel seen. I didn’t want to relive erasure in such an audio-intimate space of exclusively Black/Indigenous folks. I wanted the contribution of African Americans to be named.

However, I was simultaneously gripped by a larger question: are a people rendered practically invisible by the West even capable of then erasing another?

Real erasure requires access to power–particularly the power to shape stories. This requires holding the levers of mass media–something Indigenous brothers and sisters do not have in this country by ANY stretch of the imagination.

I noticed my sensitivity and I immediately felt guilty. Do I get to feel like yet another cultural product is being hijacked–this time by an Indigenous author–while few so-called minorities have been rendered more visible throughout American history than Black folks (for better and, far more frequently, for worse)? And, conversely, few so-called minorities have been made more invisible than Indigenous folks.

So why was I so upset? The answer–I fear–is rooted in what I understand about white supremacy and cultural hegemony. Ironically or not, the term that comes to mind is “Columbusing.” According to NPR’s “Code Switch,”, “Columbusing is when you “discover” something that’s existed forever. Just that it’s existed outside your own culture, nationality, race or even, say, your neighborhood.” The term is both a recognition and a condemnation of the way mainstream education has for so long credited Columbus for supposedly “discovering” America. While this term can apply to anyone from any culture, it most often focuses on the financial/cultural impacts arising from the fallout when white folks engage in it.

Why?

A very astute question!

When white folks “discover” something and get excited about it, their collective access to resources can turn a relatively obscure cultural product into a multi-billion dollar, global industry–too often, without the cultural context which produced said product. Everything from Yoga, and various musical genres (i.e. jazz and rock), to avocados and gentrification are arguably examples of Columbusing.

I was upset about the lack of real-time recognition from Ms. Little Badger because I was scared that some white listener with resources would be inspired and start an avalanche of cultural productivity and industry without any of those resources going to the very people who inspired them. Paranoid? Sure. Within reason? All. Day.

However, Columbusing is not the fault of Ms. Little Badger. In fact, given the origin of the term, one could argue that she tangentially represents people who were its first victims. Therein lies my guilt. I am not ignorant of this complexity, yet my understanding doesn’t always save me from my visceral reactions.

The larger question for me is…what to do with that.

If Black/Indigenous solidarity is to be realized, how do we prepare for the inevitable oppression olympics that is bound to arise in various spaces as we come together? How do Black folks hold the pain of being both torn from the land of our origins and feeling such a challenged sense of “home” with Indigenous folks’ experience of being “home”, often without a sense of autonomy and visibility therein?

How do we set aside the very real fears of prying white whims and resources long enough to stop fighting for the proverbial scraps under the table that we’ve gotten so accustomed to and adept at preparing and consuming?

One does not get to be resilient without navigating trauma. How do we leverage our collective resilience–a resilience built upon centuries of brutality–without succumbing to the traumatic knee-jerk reactions that made that resilience possible?

How do we bring our shared fears, traumas, addictions, internalized hatreds, stereotypes, and tropes to the table and co-create an altar upon which we might place them and ceremoniously say goodbye?

I don’t know the answers.

What I do know, is that if we don’t figure this out, our destinies are bound to continue running in parallel without ever intersecting. And that would be a tragedy, for us and for the rest of the world. As long as the US media still holds a powerful role in shaping the stories we globally share, there is still time to broadcast a very different story to the world.

There is still time to envision a world wherein whiteness does not have to be centralized. There is still time to show the world that healing is possible, solidarity matters. When people come together with intentionality, we can move beyond this westernized, narrow vision of living free. There is still time to export something more than fast food, carbon emissions, and faux-freedom.

The populations of so-called “western” countries will continue to shift toward a reflection of the world at-large. In 30 years, the US will no longer be a white-majority country. White supremacy has effectively mobilized to hold onto power as long as possible in part because it’s much easier to fight “for” something than against it.

While we continue to encourage white folks to take up the fight against white supremacy, the rest of us had better put some serious thought into what we want instead. Afro-Indigenous solidarity movements make sense because they center the two largest non-white populations at the founding of the US and place them squarely in the driver’s seat for this post-white majority landscape we are heading toward.

There is poetic justice in that.

It is the full circle.

To wax biblical: “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

Working together to secure reparations for both populations would be a start in the right direction. Such solidarity would go a long way in embodying the sort of world we want to live in–a good faith gesture broadcasting to the world that the scarcity mentality plaguing western civilization for so long will no longer serve us.

However, if we are to send out such a message, we must first come together to heal–as individuals and communities. There is so much work to be done, but I have no doubt the world will be better for it.

^[1] Dr. Grace Dillon is credited for coining the term Indigenous Futurism and credits Afrofuturism for her inspiration. Furthermore, the term “Afrofuturism” was actually coined in 1993 by Mark Dery, an author of Anglo-Irish-Scottish descent.

Delma Jackson III · September 16, 2020 ·

*In 1758, the Lenape Nation (of what is now the eastern coast of both southern Canada and the northern US) was one of the first nations placed on reservation in the US. Today, private property on reservations is rare. Since 1619, Africans from multiple nations were forced to cultivate private land they did not own. Today, the legacy of redlining sees many African Americans without property. In a capitalist country, land ownership is often key to building wealth.

For the last 20 years, I’ve been exploring the concept of justice in various forms through the lens of the old proverb (29:18): “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” It’s partly why I was so taken with the work of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association when I was in undergrad.

“Africa for Africans” was such a bold vision that when combined with the racial climate of the day, may explain why–a century later–it remains “the largest mass movement in African-American history.” That was the other reason I was taken with the movement. Regardless of what you think of Garvey’s vision, the fact that it remains the largest single movement in African American history I’d never heard of remains astonishing.

Likewise, the first time I saw Wakanda on the big screen, I was reminded again of the power of story to capture the hearts and minds of people. The history of Africa’s fictional “hidden gem,” with no interference from colonial powers, and the resulting combination of tradition and tech embodies everything I love about the power of story. Chadwick Boseman’s role in bringing the story to life will enshrine him as a King forevermore. May he rest in power.

Be it Marcus Garvey’s vision to take African Americans back “home,” MLK’s dream of racial accountability and solidarity, or Ryan Coogler’s artistic interpretation of Wakanda, story moves us beyond pragmatism and affords us a glimpse of a life limited only by our imagination.

Justice doesn’t have to be strictly pragmatic, but it will take funding to explore the possibilities. It took funding to bring those aforementioned visions to the collective imaginations of the people. If it takes funding to share a vision, you KNOW it’ll take funding to bring it to fruition. I’ve made it no secret that I want to see reparations as a means to both.

The bigger the tent—the more space we create for everyone’s liberation—the closer we come to the mark. As I consider white supremacist-patriarchy’s impact on the African diaspora, I am coming to understand that there’s something in the story of Indigenous Nations that may hold the key to Black liberation and viceversa.

There are so many historical narratives between Indigenous Nations and the African Diaspora that mirror each other, I can’t help but ask if “the case for reparations” couldn’t/shouldn’t be broadened to include willing Indigenous peoples.

I say this because…

I want to live somewhere rooted in the highest ideals of pre-colonialism and sustained by the best that all-inclusive civil engineering, green infrastructure, and general innovation has to offer.

I want to live in a place where matriarchy is a legitimate form of government–not patriarchal-ly mocked as “the power of the pussy” with a nod and a wink.

I want a fuller life that distinguishes insulation from isolation. I want shrines to practice collective silence joining the spaces of praise and worship.

I want restorative justice to be a foregone conclusion and universal health care taken for granted. I want policies born of our morality instead of moral posturing per policies mandates.

I want to see my ancestors in the way my grandchildren move through the world.

I want help to see and be seen.

Because I’m tired…and I’m FAR from alone. There are whole communities suffering from generational exhaustion.

I’m tired of subsidizing the white-body-supremacist fantasies personified in the mediocrity, callousness, and cruelty of this so-called leader.

My hands grow ashy from drying the tears of my daughter’s understanding of the Blackness she embodies.

From the projects and tenements to the reservations and trailer parks…I know a ghetto when I see one. From Warsaw 1940 to pick-a-spot, USA 20-now, “it is,” as the president says, “what it is.”

And as so many have asked before, how long must we wage a hearts and minds campaign? How long must we continue to disproportionately suffer while those in power play their inglorious game of thrones?

In the meantime…

How many children have been lost between us…? How many parcels created, carved, and sold away between us? How many languages, histories, stories died on the lips of our ancestors.

How many of us have known the pain of sending our children to school knowing they’ll receive an education that does nothing to fill in the blanks? How many of us know the pain of wishing we were someone else’s children only to hear our own say the same–the multi-generational curse of self-hatred to either be overcome or internalized?

How many of us know the pain of seeing our representation being narrowed to tropes for the consumption of fragile white egos whose one-dimensional ethnicity relies on a superior/inferior paradigm.

How many of us have languished in the indignity of poverty in the midst of great wealth–even as we watch our cultural productions commodified and mass produced.

How many of us have known the indignity of whimsical autonomy–forced to live where we’re told, only to see what we build again burned to ashes…again.

How many of us know the pain of journeys long in the making that we never wanted to take–from the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Trail of Tears?

We’ve known terror. We’ve known trauma. We’ve known erasure.

Maybe there’s something to be gained by swapping stories. Maybe our children would benefit from learning who they are–together.

Maybe there’s something to be gained from healing through celebration and commiseration.

Who knows…

Maybe we can build something new together. Maybe we take the pain of systemic violence and turn it into a commitment to living in greater harmony with each other. No community thrives without a story to rally around. And we have one helluva story to share.

And maybe, just maybe, there’s a place where conversations about reparations and reservations begin to blend. Where the questions about autonomy in the past provide answers about autonomy in the future.

With enough resources amassed, two of the most isolated and impoverished communities in the US can become one of the cleanest, greenest, most educated, peoples in the world.

Since there’s a shared history, maybe it’s worth exploring a shared future? This upcoming season of my new podcast Dive In-Justice, I’ll be exploring that very question–examining what’s been done, and asking what more we could do.

The Dive In-Justice (DIJ) podcast is created by and for those who’d see justice in the world but don’t always know what it is or how to get it. DIJ explores what we mean by “justice,” and “community,” and why it’s often SO hard to work with the very people we want to liberate…including and especially ourselves.

Join us for Sseason 1, where we’ll look at justice through the lens of Black/Indigenous solidarity movements past, present, and possibly future. What’s worked? What hasn’t? What were the goals? How close did they get? And, perhaps most importantly, when things fell apart, “why?”

Delma Jackson III

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