Tuesday, March 16, 2010

How Rebecca Walker Kinda Changed My Life...




Transformative, is a big fancy word for something that can happen in an instant. I may have a slight flair for the dramatic, but I don't use the word lightly. But the more I think about the 1 hour I spent listening to Rebecca Walker speak at the Empowering Women of Color Conference (EWOCC) this past weekend I can't think of a better word to describe the weight and the depth of the thoughts she's left still settling like so much fine dust in my mind...

This past weekend I attended the Empowering Women of Color Conference at UC Berkeley-- the oldest and largest conference for womyn of color. In addition to the breakout session and panels, there were two amazing keynote speakers: Aurora Levins Morales & Rebecca Walker. For those of you that may not know, Walker is a writer, Third Wave feminist, mixed daughter of acclaimed writer and activist Alice Walker (she wrote the Color Purple) and a Jewish civil rights lawyer. I am in the middle of reading her first memoir "Black White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self" in which she talks about growing up after her parents divorce.

Walker spoke to the 80 or so women of color gathered in Cal's Student Union each with her own dreams and demons and countless questions about the possibilities and challenges of being, living and loving as a woman of color in a society and in a world that wages daily wars on our bodies, minds, families and communities.

Rebecca Walker gave us a lesson on PROPAGANDA.

She didn't provide us with a clear definition of propaganda-- she left it broadly defined as public relations (Edward Bernays) and an ideological tool, masked as absolute truth. For example: Walker suggests that the traditional feminist movement commandment that women do not and should not need men ("A woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle")is a form of propaganda which we have taken in and internalized and which has now become a corner stone around which we build our sense of modern womanhood. She posited that propaganda serves a clear purpose, but that as we grow up-- a new generation-- we must think about whether the purpose of these so-called "truths" is still relevant and recognize if and when they must be rejected, (re)imagined or (re)constructed.

Without placing direct judgment on a particular type of "propaganda" or social movement she implied that we as young women of color need to brave the deep murky waters of mixed messages and entrapping ideology that we inherit, are spoon/force-fed, or even seek out in our quest for the "right" politics and social justice consciousness/activism. She spoke vaguely and generally assuming perhaps rightly so, that we were all intelligent enough to read between her lines and somehow empower us to find our own truths and to rethink "propaganda" as not something that presents some mighty moral dilemma, but rather as a strategic ideological tool that we must learn to recognize, sense, use, accept, challenge, disrupt, resist and even reject. Walker asked us to identify our own propaganda and learn how to release it when it is no longer healthy or necessary.

We must be well read in the propaganda masquerading as truth that fuels many of the movements we have come to accept as radical and crucial to becoming strong activist women (ie: Feminisms/Womanism, racial/identity politics). In key ways she was asking us to be strategic and to think about who we were in these movements and "revolutions." She asked us to (re)imagine who our "masters" were. Are we masters of our politics and activism or are we mere lemmings in a war much larger and bigger than ourselves? She suggested that we were the first generation of women that could ironically find empowerment through challenging the old modes and methods of empowerment from first and second wave feminisms. She dared us to think about whether we ourselves were being appropriated (not necessarily by the (white)Man,) but rather by the ideological power of the very movements that we are indebted to, the very movements that created the very rights and power we enjoy in 2010. While many of the movements are not as strong as they once were, ideologically they have left their mark and this is not just a scholarly dilemma for those of us standing in the long shadow of the ivory tower (or living in it), but a reality of how ideology has seeped into the very fabric of modern American life and how we understand who we are. And again it's not about whether the ideology is "right" or "wrong" but rather about its powerful-- even seductive nature.

Basically, Walker was asking us to cut off our own umbilical chords, our current life source as nascent (or so we're told) women in the 21st century. And that is scary as hell. Initially, such a suggestion feels like some kind of twisted suicide. It feels like the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate disrespect to a generation of people, now elders and political icons of the Civil Rights Movement, the radical people of color movements and feminist movements. It seemed so crazy, that hours later I was still giddy with the thought of it as she kept suggesting that it may just be the time to reject the truth of our elders and blaze an altogether new path that might very well contradict and conflict outright with the tenets of the past.

Some may say that Walker is just the ungrateful, coddled product of famous lineage who came of age as a Movement baby in the 1970s right at the epicenter of feminist and black power movements. Some may say that her founding of Third Wave Feminism came out of her privilege as a mixed race daughter of a lawyer and Pulitzer Prize winning writer/activist. I'd like to think that she herself would concede that her words and Third Wave feminism itself has it's propaganda. The point is as Malcolm X once said addressing black propaganda is that "One of the best ways to safeguard yourself from being deceived is always to form the habit of looking at things for yourself, listening to things for yourself, thinking for yourself, before you try and come to any judgment."

This may sound all convoluted--like philosophical trash that seems to threaten any idea towards action and fighting for social justice. But I took in Rebecca Walker's words and applied them to what I knew was going on in my own mind and heart. We've been told certain things and been encouraged to take up certain burdens from our parents, our families and every real or imagined community we belong to. In most cases, we have very voluntarily taken up many crosses, so to speak. What does an activist look like? What does a freedom fighter look like? Can she be gender-normative,straight identified, with a partner/husband and children? Can she work in the White House, or be a talk show host? Can she be a corporate lawyer or banker? Can she be a twelve year old girl?Can she be a homemaker? Can she be queer? Can she be "uneducated"? Can she be trans? Can she be an elderly woman who took no part in the 1st and 2nd wave, but who raised her family, community and worked for a country that never recognized her efforts? This is much more than the cliche "What does a feminist look like?" Maybe we should be asking "What does oppression look like?"
Where are the battles being fought and who do we see as worthy of fighting them? Have we reached a sort of self-righteous social justice snobbery and dare I say dogmatic perspective that has made us incapable of finding creative, productive and perhaps altogether new means and modes to reach true empowerment and speak our clear truths to power? Have we paralyzed ourselves and our struggle by regurgitating our radical inheritance and redrawing the lines and boundaries in which we exist? How can we empower ourselves to reach our fullest human potential? How do we begin to heal and transform alongside other women and yes, even alongside other men?

Walker told us to take care of ourselves first and foremost and not to carry the full, impossible burden of the world and of movements that predate us and will outlive us on our shoulders. I for one believe in the power of individual and collective social transformation. I like the idea of earning my battle scars and knowing the history and struggles of the movements we have inherited. We owe a great deal to those movements and to those activists that paved the way. It's all a life-long process of making and (re)making the self and every step along the way you grow. I like the idea of continuing to fight in every creative, productive, positive way. We are superwomen, but we are not immunune and we can self-destruct, burn out and live bitterly because of the burdens we have taken on.
We should, as Audre Lorde always said, transform our silence (and anger) into power and to also allow time and room to heal from the toxic spaces we go to in the search for a better tomorrow (as cheesy as it sounds).

Walker's speech was compelling and deeply inspiring. She wasn't telling us to punk out or give up-- on the contrary she was encouraging us to build a bridge to our own power and to claim and share the truths and the strength we find on our way there.

And that's how Rebecca Walker kinda changed my life.


This post is dedicated to young (super)women trying to change the world