Shange’s description of a Spanish class with a teacher who knows all of the techniques and strategies to create a classroom environment that is anti anti-Black is something that stuck out to me from the readings this week. I would say that as we have moved on from the summer of 2020 and more people have become aware of ways that they can be actively antiracist (or have chosen to forget this time in our history), there have been a lot more progressive people that continually try to follow all the “rules” that exist to being an ally to attempt to make a difference. But, what Shange does well in the readings this week is looking at the impact that these progressive ideas and theories about how to better the Black community have on actual people. In my own experience, I can say that growing up some of the most unexpected and hurtful experiences of inequality that I faced came from people who were liberal and thought that they were inoculated from prejudice because of the many books that they’d read on racism or their political ideologies. As our society continues to grow and learn from its history, I think that more discussions about how progressive identities can still perpetuate harm and have negative impacts on communities of color will be had as they become more normalized, which will require us all to be more introspective with how our identities influence our lives.
Another thing that Shange discusses in this reading is the difference between “Our Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter” and how to a certain extent the use of our instead of specifically referring to Black lives diminishes the importance of Black lives within our society as well. This reminded me of several conversations I had with my friends about Asian American violence around the same time and how several social media posts I read said that people should be as vocal about Stopping Asian Hate as they were about Black Lives Matter. These social media posts always had incredibly divided comment sections where Black people and Asian people would go back and forth about whose issues were more important at this time. Hearing this, and reading Shange’s description of students saying that their generation was next, made me think about what POC solidarity looks like and if it even exists (3)? I’m still not entirely sure if POC solidarity does exist, but I do believe that at the end of the day it is definitely not the fault of one group of POC if it doesn’t exist. Because of how ingrained racial hierarchies have been to our society, we are conditioned to want to fight for whatever privileges we have even if it means putting other groups down sometimes. This isn’t the fault of individuals, but rather the result of a society that has constantly pitted groups of color against each other to keep a minority group of people in power. If we are too busy fighting each other to work together to stop the system, the system will only continue. I hope that in the future we can eventually get there, but I’m just not sure how much progress we’d have to make or if it is even possible.