Woke
Page 3
I use the term ‘POC’ because it is a convenient way to group all non-whites together without having to go to the trouble of identifying their differences. Needless to say, this is particularly helpful when it comes to oriental countries like Japan, China and Siam, whose citizens are pretty much indistinguishable.
Whiteness always equates to structural power, even in predominately black countries. An acquaintance recently tried to suggest to me that, globally speaking, white people are the minority. This is simply absurd. Why would ethnic minorities be called ‘ethnic minorities’ if they weren’t in the minority?
Some people really are fucking idiots.
Besides, whiteness acts as a kind of poison, contaminating all that is laudable in black culture. You may recall the nineties pop band Eternal, who only achieved true artistic success after the white woman left. A single white member of an otherwise black singing group is what is commonly known as a ‘spanner in the works’. Louise Redknapp was that spanner, and her inveterate whiteness meant that she couldn’t harmonise for shit. ‘Just a Step from Heaven’ would have been an immortal classic were it not for Redknapp caterwauling in the background like a harpy with a slipped disc.
As activist Rudy Martinez notes, in an article addressed to whites entitled ‘Your DNA is an abomination’:
White death will mean liberation for all. To you goodhearted liberals, apathetic nihilists, and right-wing extremists: accept this death as the first step toward defining yourself as something other than the oppressor. Until then, remember this: I hate you because you shouldn’t exist.
This cannot be said often enough. It is not racist to hate someone on the basis of their skin colour, if that person is white. Indeed, my seething contempt for the Caucasian race is precisely what sustains my art.
The ubiquity of racism is an idea echoed by one of my favourite writers, Afua Hirsch, in her book Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging. Above all, I admire Hirsch’s tenacity, because even though she comes from an extremely wealthy family, was privately educated, enjoyed an idyllic childhood complete with ‘berry-stained rambles on Wimbledon Common’ and ‘walking holidays in the Alps’, she is still able to see past all that to realise that she is every bit as subjugated as those individuals who were bought and sold during the era of slavery. She is also brave enough to call out the obvious racism of anyone who gave her book a bad review.
Another activist who won’t let her wealthy origins detract from her oppression is Munroe Bergdorf, who appeared on BBC One’s current affairs show This Week in October 2017 to point out that Britain is a ‘deeply racist society’. As a person of mixed race, Bergdorf is a true victim. It is not her fault that she inadvertently gives the impression of being an irredeemably pampered cunt.
‘The uncomfortable truth,’ says Bergdorf, ‘is that the white race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on earth.’ The validity of this statement cannot be denied. White people are indisputably privileged, irrespective of their class, economic circumstances, health, age, looks, or whether or not they have all their limbs intact.
Consider, if you will, the example of white American author Helen Keller (1880–1968). Even though she was left deaf and blind following an illness as a baby, she still managed to study for a degree, write twelve books and travel the world to give lectures. This kind of privilege is staggering.
Let us not forget that the history books were written by straight white men, which explains why history as an academic subject is so flagrantly revisionist. How many people, for instance, know or even care that Agatha Christie was a Bangladeshi transwoman?
Earlier this year I decided to spend a month identifying as BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), and there’s no denying that I experienced some terrible prejudice. You wouldn’t believe the looks of disapproval that people gave me when I told them I was an ethnic minority.
In fact, the day after I transitioned to BAME, my personal trainer phoned me up to cancel one of our appointments. This never happened when I was white. I refuse to accept this as mere coincidence.
I’d go so far as to say that being transracial can be even more of an ordeal than being ethnic from birth. It is known as ‘wrongskin’, and one of the most famous sufferers was the civil rights activist and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Rachel Dolezal. Although born to white parents, Dolezal has always known she was African-American because as a child she would use brown rather than peach crayons to draw pictures of herself. If that isn’t the behaviour of a black woman, I don’t know what is.
When I was going through my BAME phase I found a similar connection to my ethnic brothers and sisters. I found that my dancing had suddenly improved, I developed a taste for Um Bongo, and I started listening to rap music by the likes of N.W.A. (‘Niggaz Wit Acronyms’). It’s only since I’ve retransitioned to white that I’ve managed to revitalise my love of Enya.
It is no accident that the most effective president in the history of the United States of America has been Barack Obama. Blackness brings with it an innate wisdom. Perhaps it has something to do with ancient tribal forces that are beyond our comprehension. Obama’s heart beats in time with the drums of a distant Africa, and his voice rings out in stirring ululations, like the war-cry of a pygmy king echoing through a grass-thatched hut.
I’ve seen Black Panther six times by the way, so I know what I’m talking about.
Many have argued that Obama’s legacy is tainted by the fact that on his watch the Democratic Party haemorrhaged support to the Republicans, that he enabled policies of illegal domestic surveillance, doubled the national debt, allowed millions of citizens to fall below the poverty line and was guilty of reckless interventionism in foreign disputes. What these critics forget is that Obama was mixed race, and all of these flaws can be attributed to his white side. If he had been fully black, his legacy would have been irreproachable.
This teaches us that if ever we are to progress towards a woke utopia, white people must atone for, or outright reject, their whiteness. Beware of those who claim that people of colour are capable of being racist, for this is a typical tactic of the far right. Prejudice from one POC to a different kind of POC is known as ‘colourism’, and is entirely forgivable in the context of their history of disenfranchisement.
In order to sustain the dignity of POCs, we should not be holding them to the same standards as whites.
My Culture Is Not Your Goddam Prom Dress
You can still be homeless and have white privilege.
Munroe Bergdorf
One of the ways in which white people wield their structural power is through what’s known as cultural appropriation. Allow me to illustrate.
In April 2018, a young American student by the name of Keziah tweeted some photographs from her high-school prom. Although Keziah is Caucasian, she had decided to wear a traditional Chinese garment known as a qipao. Thankfully, she was called out on social media for her colossal egotism. One Twitter user known as Jeremy Lam, an American man who looks a bit Chinese, responded with ‘My culture is NOT your goddam prom dress’, helpfully capitalising the word ‘not’ just in case people read this as an endorsement.
Over forty thousand retweets later, and all of a sudden it was Lam who was at the receiving end of abuse, simply for drawing attention to Keziah’s racism. As usual, those who stand up for minorities end up in the firing line. Lam was completely justified in speaking out on behalf of the one billion Chinese people on this planet, who doubtless all felt exactly the same way.
Let me be absolutely clear about where I stand on this issue. Keziah, whoever she is, is a monster. If this white colonialist whorebag had any respect for Chinese culture, she’d have broken her toes and had her feet bound like all proper Chinawomen do.
Cultural appropriation is the principal signifier of white privilege. ‘All white people,’ states Guardian columnist Lola Okolosie, are implicated ‘in white supremacy’. In other words, literally ev
ery white person you have ever met is a racist. It stands to reason.
Even death cannot save people of colour from the marauding spirit of these white magpies. When Aretha Franklin passed away, a division of guards at Buckingham Palace played a brass band version of ‘Respect’ and, in doing so, showed that they simply do not comprehend the meaning of the song. Worse still, these white bandsmen appropriated this beautiful black woman’s song on the day of her funeral. It’s gross beyond belief.
It just goes to show how easy it is to fall into the bearpit of racism through mere ignorance. Have you ever used cutlery in Wagamama? Ask yourself why you didn’t opt for the chopsticks. The answer is simple: somewhere inside of you, ever so deeply buried, is a venomous racist gremlin.
Sometimes in order to be woke one must make personal sacrifices. For a long while one of my favourite activities was yoga, until I read a dissertation about how the practice had originated in ancient India and was therefore deeply problematic. I was mortified. I had been engaging in an act of cultural genocide simply by sitting in difficult postures on a mat.
I quickly undertook some much needed research, and found a website called ‘Decolonizing Yoga’, which features a fabulous article by Susanna Barkataki, an Indian woman residing in America who ‘often cries on her yoga mat from joy’. I haven’t cried since 2004 – and that was only because of conjunctivitis – but I do understand how she feels.
Moreover, I can appreciate her sense of being othered by the white Westerners who so brazenly adopt these oriental practices without taking any time to consider the consequences. It is, as Barkataki points out, a form of colonisation. I would go further and say that for a white person to participate in yoga is effectively to re-enact the British Army’s massacre of a thousand Indian civilians at Amritsar in 1919.
‘To be colonized is to become a stranger in your own land,’ writes Barkataki. ‘As a desi, this is the feeling I get in most Westernized yoga spaces today.’ Reading this passage stirred acute feelings of guilt within my soul for all the Mountain Poses and Downward Facing Dogs I had performed over the years. As penance, I fasted for a week. Not that I gave up eating as such, but I did refrain from partaking in my favourite dish – smashed avocado salad with grilled kale – which took considerable self-discipline.
More recently, Labour MP Dawn Butler took umbrage at a new brand of ‘jerk rice’ that had been marketed by television chef Jamie Oliver. ‘Your jerk rice is not ok,’ Butler tweeted. ‘This appropriation from Jamaica needs to stop.’ For me, angry tweets addressed to celebrity chefs are what being a Member of Parliament is all about.
Oliver needs to stay in his lane. It is baffling that he felt he could bastardise Caribbean cuisine in a cynical ploy to make money. The very least he could have done is ask permission from Rustie Lee.
Butler, on the other hand, is a hero. It takes considerable courage for a female MP to openly challenge the authority of a male celebrity, particularly one whose every recipe screams toxic masculinity. Let us not forget that white supremacy comes in many forms, and often it can insinuate itself into our culture through microwavable ready-meals.
I am not suggesting that Oliver is evil (he definitely is), but there’s a very good chance that he secretly yearns for a white ethno-state. With no evidence to the contrary, this strikes me as the most sensible conclusion. In any case, this was the man who spent years campaigning to eliminate childhood obesity in schools, which is taking fat-shaming to genocidal extremes.
Artists such as myself also need to be keenly aware of the impact of our choices on marginalised groups. When white writers put words into the mouths of black characters it is known in the literary sphere as ‘crackerblack’. We’re all familiar with the concept. Some of the more cringeworthy examples of cracker-black can be found in the films of Quentin Tarantino or the more offensive novels of Mark Twain. Most famous of all is the play Othello, in which our supposed ‘great bard’ tried his hand at a kind of Moorish patois. ‘I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss.’ Find me one black man who speaks like that.
The more that white writers insist on straying into black culture, the more I’m convinced that burning books and works of art is occasionally the right thing to do. When I’ve said this in the past, I have been accused of perpetuating a similar ideology to that of ISIS who, as we all know, have destroyed historical artefacts in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Needless to say, I am no supporter of ISIS. I simply believe that problematic art needs to be expunged in order to preserve a free and civilised society.
And say what you will about ISIS, but at least they’re not Islamophobic.
Cultural Appropriation
Thief of culture.
You slither hamstyle with dreadlocked hands,
Clenching in a calypso chokehold of bindi banditry,
Moistened by an ego semi-fried in foreign oils,
Withdrawing into striptease fissures of night.
You will never be Aswad.
Plunderbeast of history.
My ancestors scream in your hollow wigwam,
Ghostrolling in the ectoplasm of your hate.
I staunch the flow of simpering tribal sauce,
A digital sombrero clings deafblind
To a face falsely smeared in a coalish hue.
Filcher of rice.
Parades at promtime in a fraudulent frock,
A gurning juggernaut of stunted envy,
Appropriating my soul, my gaylord shoes.
The death-minstrel who leaps backwards onwardly,
Washing away the past with your piss of lies.
The Scourge of Whiteness
Whiteness is a chattering virus,
Bare-chested and brutal,
Gilded and gelded,
Bearing beer-stained flags that skitter
In the rattling zephyr of Farage’s death-sneeze.
Citizens half-Hitlered,
Fattened on reveries of Brexit
And laminated honky llama cream.
Herds that coalesce into a giant colonial lozenge,
Throttling their foes with septic bunting.
Memories of a future with invisible swastikas
Tattooed onto lager-stuffed livers.
Angry male feet attack synthetic spheres of leather,
Strike them into nets like migrant heads.
Anglo-chat speakly for the hopscotch juice.
Whiteness is rape,
A terrifying blancmange of spite
In a landscape laden with severed hands applauding.
Crabwise, it dances on the fudge of eternity
And gets twatted on the breath of a half-fisted pig.
My Angry Vagina
My growler growls.
Plucked-up and back-eared
It chewmunches through
Patriarchal savannahs,
Slipping into packs of males with a toothful grin
To tug and wreck with lady cave precision
Centuries of bap-slapping tyranny
And overtures of porksworded sicklust.
So to the foe I skiphopjump,
Biting man-skin with deadly spreadlegs,
My ravenous clunge grazes on their grazes.
Vagina dentata.
Beyond a bent matrix of doom I soar:
Sucked up, fucked up, fluently wombed,
Frigging my way to an openclosed eye socket,
My snatch screams for justice.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to Men About Feminism
To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.
Valerie Solanas
Ours is a loud, crass, male world. I mean that literally. The planet we live on is the shape of a testicle, for fuck’s sake.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that virtually all of my female associates are activists. One of my most radical friends is Cassandra (the second ‘s’ is silent) who is passionate about poststructuralist gender theory and vegan bl
oodsports. She recently produced her own series of online vlogs in order to raise awareness about toxic masculinity in the amateur hemp-weaving community. It wasn’t as successful as she’d hoped, partly because nobody seemed to be interested.
Last week she overheard some construction workers talking about Jodie Whittaker, the actor who made history when she was cast as the first ever female Doctor Who. According to Cassandra, these men were discussing how attractive they found Whittaker, and there was even some coarse remark about her breasts. It goes without saying that women shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of filth when they are innocently eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.
But this is about so much more than a timelord’s mammary glands. There can be few examples of misogyny more virulent than a man finding a woman attractive. Worse still, such sexual objectification is very difficult to police, because often these thoughts remain unarticulated. Sometimes, men pleasure themselves when they are alone and think about the women they know.
Just take a moment to consider the implications of this. It could be you. It could be your daughter. He could be fantasising about an incestuous orgy in which he penetrates your grandmother while she, in turn, is busy stimulating the clitorises of two of your favourite aunts. Every time you speak to a man I would like you to remember this, and the likelihood that even during the course of your polite conversation this image is simmering away in his depraved brain.
Personally, I would rather be boiled alive in a giant crucible of yak’s piss than have a man look at me without my consent.
In spite of our efforts, fourth-wave feminism has yet to eradicate male sexuality in its entirety. We successfully campaigned to ban the topless models on Page 3 of the Sun newspaper, and yet men in this country are still lusting after women. I find it baffling. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume there was something instinctive about it.