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In my first year, first quarter in grad school, I was taking a philosophy course called Subjectivity.  The professor used the word "black" to convey "depressing" or "pessimistic."

Immediate interior conflict.  The ability to sustain dissonance: "Great, let's outcast blackness during my first ten minutes at grad school." vs "Don't let yourself get too pulled away from class by your own sense of hurt and pc-ness, focus on his point."  Having a consciousness of the profound pervasiveness of oppression, creating a perpetual sense of dread, while also being committed to pragmatic living, recognizing that I have to go along to get along.

I would not be the girl to challenge that prof on my first day of school.  But I was one of two black women in class.  Another sister (darker than me, I noted), poked the problem with a stick and asked: "Why is the word "black" used to convey things that we reject?"

Indeed.  Shifts and discomfort from the white students and, did I mention?, white professor.  I smiled inwardly, even though I was disappointed that I was not as brave.

That was almost exactly five years ago.  The grad school hustle did not get easier, and I increasingly checked out.  It is difficult for me to make sense in that space, and make sense of that space.  But I am sitting here reading and writing and trying my hardest to get my dissertation completed so it doesn't end up being five or more years of what I like to describe as acid flashbacks.

And I am reading these feminist philosophical articles about women's oppression and autonomy.  Apparently there is a forty-year debate, A FORTY-YEAR DEBATE, about whether or not a "deferential wife" is sufficiently morally autonomous.  I can't even...  The terms of the debate are nowhere near anything that resonates with me and it feels a little crazy-making to even engage the essays deeply.  What are they talking about.  But if you asked me, I could tell you exactly what they are talking about.  I could probably write a pretty good exposition of the arguments.  But, in another way, on a different and deeper register, I have no idea what they are talking about.

Anyway, I was reading this 1998/99 article by Kathryn Abrams (I presume a white law prof, but I'm not certain) who puts in her two cents about how autonomous or agentic women are or aren't.  Then I read an article by Judy Scales-Trent (a black law prof) who responded to Abrams' article in a way that was so...weird and kind of perfect.  She briefly dismisses Abrams' ideas as well as the whole question, and then the majority of her paper is about her tour of "colonial Williamsburg" which is near the location of where the conference for these paper presentations is being held.  She proceeds to describe the absurdist ways in which the existence of black people and the fact of slavery is obscured, invisible, or profoundly distorted.  She writes,

...I read a flyer put out by the Williamsburg Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, noticing immediately that all of the people pictured in colonial garb had white skin.  Had there really been no African-Americans at all in Williamsburg during this period?  I then saw that, indeed, there must have been African-Americans in the area because, according to the Visitors Bureau, tourists could visit a "reconstructed slave quarter" on the outskirts of Colonial Williamsburg.  What aggravated me in this flyer, however, was the extensive description of the plantations tourists could visit, to see how the "colonial aristocracy" lived.  "Aristocracy?"  What a fine word!  Doesn't it sound elegant and graceful and genteel?  I wondered if we were thinking about the same people: were the writers of this brochure thinking about those people who were running slave labor camps?  Were they thinking of the same people who kidnapped workers so they would not have to pay them a fair wage?  Were they describing the people who enacted laws stating that those African-American workers who tried to escape from forced labor camps were to be punished by dismemberment?

And...her paper just sort of goes along like that for the rest of the essay, offering testimony about her experience of constantly being told up is down during her visit of southern slave plantations.  Finally she submits her conclusion in maybe one or two sentences: if anyone should be worried about their autonomy, it should be white people, because their devotion to power and control seems to disrupt any real potential to exercise deliberative choice.  She does not defend this view, she simply treats it as self-evident after pages of recounting her bizarre trip to Williamsburg.

This paper is outstanding.  I can not think of a more perfect response.

Of course, I imagine that some folks read Scales-Trent's response and was like "WTF?" "This is off topic."  "I didn't say that."  "Why is she talking about Williamsburg for pages???"  "This doesn't make any bloody sense!"  "This is crazy."

Yes.  It makes no sense at all in one context.  (How does Ani DiFranco put it? "Taken out of context, I must seem so strange.")  Scales-Trent decided to not accept one single premise in the debate, didn't even bother entertaining the premise that she thought were obviously wrong, and just moved on to write pages and pages recounting her unbearable experiences in Williamsburg.  I think it's incredibly brave to insist on a stance that radically departs from a dominant methodology and from premises widely assumed to be obvious.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a black dude who writes for The Atlantic, thought it was a good idea to say that the the blocking of marriage for lgbt people in the US today is like the blocking of marriage for slaves in the US.  I think that comparison ridiculously and needlessly understates the experience of slavery, a position I've gone over here at length.  I often like Coates' writing because he's funny and can be sharp, but he can also be rude and arrogant.  I tried to engage him in comments in a narrow way that accepted his premises, but instead picked on a turn of phrase, when in fact I thought his whole post was extremely whack.  Unfortunately, he was rude and arrogant in his response. 

I wish I had been braver and really went there with him, and didn't give a fuck if he or anyone else thought I was just another crazy black girl who is off topic.  I want to be unafraid of writing & speaking in that different register.  I want to be flexible in it.  I want to be able to sing the high notes.