Seeing in the Dark
April 13, 2021 9:08 AM   Subscribe

Activist and author Breai Michele Mason-Campbell writes a long (5,000+ word) secular sermon on race, grief, accountability, and change in the inaugural issue of Pipe Wrench Magazine. Content warning for acknowledgment of the abuse and murder of Black people, primarily women.

White men, White women, Black men, cis women, cis men, hetero folks, people with degrees, people with generational wealth, anyone who doesn’t share their neighborhood with drug dealers: Corona helped you build up some armor. Use it. Now is the time to show mercy with brave and decisive acts. Stop confusing irresponsibility with freedom. Accept accountability for the fact that where you live, what you buy, how you handle the noise on your block, and where your kids go to school all help or hurt somebody’s chances at life itself. Make. Different. Choices.

The magazine recommends reading the primary essay first, then exploring one or more of the nine related conversation pieces. They include an excerpt from the book Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Frontlines of White Nationalism by Seyward Darby and a playlist by producer, musical director, and bassist Nicholas Clark.

From Clark:
The songs fit into four buckets:
1. Songs that describe the environments that many Black Americans are raised in due to centuries of economic disenfranchisement and neglect.
2. Songs that cry out for change for the people who inhabit the communities described in the songs above.
3. Songs that call for people to fight against the systemic structures that aid in oppression.
4. Songs that affirm the identity of Black Americans, in response to the degradation of Black American identity by white American culture.

The path forward is understanding. The path forward is empathy. The path forward is embracing the journey of others and actively trying to understand America through the eyes of those who America has seemingly cast aside. Let this music help those who still ask why Black Americans continue to march in the streets, or why Black Americans need a whole month, or show, or playlist, dedicated to their history. Listen closely, and you’ll hear the answers.
posted by Bella Donna (7 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
"Trapped indoors as they and we have been for a year, it occurs to me that White people have just figured out what it’s like to be in a living nightmare. White America now knows a little bit about pervasive suffering: what it is like for one’s freedom and joy to be muffled by fear and uncertainty, panic over scarce resources, and the omnipresence of danger. For people to intentionally avoid and isolate you. How painful it is to hope that things are finally getting better, just to wake up to more of the same, or worse. What it feels like to be entombed inside a replica of one’s life; recognizable, but guarded and distant from one’s truest self, where neither the fullness of joy nor the insulating arms of community can reach. And they have found themselves woefully unprepared. "

I'm not too far into this yet, but as a bog-standard white guy raised in the all-encompassing WASP suburbs, this part hits me really hard. Last spring I was sitting on my bed talking to my roommate and trying to express this brand-new to me feeling of constant background fear to them as I watched everything get canceled and closed, case numbers climbing, and felt like the solid earth was crumbling beneath me.

Watching the BLM protests explode into action on the internet and in-person, hearing all the speeches and seeing the footage of Floyd, watching cops pepper-spray and tear gas and drag people over concrete in person, really made those feelings and the reality black people had been trying to make others see weld together in my mind more clearly than anything ever had. Hearing co-workers and family and strangers dismiss or mock or encourage the continuation and escalation of everything I was seeing and feeling, things that felt so obviously wrong on every moral and factual level I could measure them against at this point, really drove the point home.

God, I feel like I could write a page about every sentence in that paragraph that would ultimately boil down to "Living like this by default, from birth... now that I've had a taste, I can't even properly imagine. This has to change."
posted by wafehling at 10:28 AM on April 13, 2021 [6 favorites]


Mason-Campbell's essay is exquisite. Thank you.
posted by Jesse the K at 2:25 PM on April 13, 2021 [1 favorite]


The last line of that essay is really a knockout punch, it's a great read. Thanks for the post.
posted by Rinku at 3:25 PM on April 13, 2021 [1 favorite]


"Voting rights didn’t fix “it,” nor did desegregation laws, because the letter of the law cannot counteract the apathy of a people."

She's pretty optimistic that the pandemic has shaken the apathy of White people. Spot on about how White people lack accountability in our society. The metaphor of layered dolls works well. I hope white people can build momentary rejection of injustice into toppling institutional racism.
posted by Mister Cheese at 1:38 PM on April 14, 2021 [1 favorite]


I'm a little sorry I framed the this post as I did. It seems pretty intimidating. If folks want to start with something less daunting, try the companion piece, A Dinner Party for Modern Times by Shanna Tiayon. How it begins:

In the spirit of Pipe Wrench, I thought I might dissect the meal that Breai served us in Seeing in the Dark into its respective courses, perhaps aiding the digestive process. And in true dinner party fashion, offer dinner table conversation starters for each course; conversation befitting of our fine dining experience.

The Appetizer: Oppressions Rockefeller

At the height of the pandemic, a White woman I used to be friends with on Facebook posted a picture of herself with her husband in a Target, no masks, smiling in brazen defiance. She captioned the image, “fighting our oppression.”

What oppression? The oppressive “Covid-19 response industrial complex” that asked her to wear a mask in public so as not to infect others. The “biased public health policy” that also asked others to do the same to protect her.

I unfriended her that day.

posted by Bella Donna at 5:33 AM on April 15, 2021


try the companion piece, A Dinner Party for Modern Times by Shanna Tiayon
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:16 PM on April 15, 2021 [1 favorite]


Oops! Thanks, MonkeyToes!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:53 AM on April 16, 2021


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