Facebook Publication Date: 12/11/2018 8:12
Read this hard.
If I lose you, I lose you.
Breaking The Toxic Contract Begins.
_____
DiDi is the yin to my yang.
I really want you to read this and to, after you appreciate the lilt and moxie, really appreciate the message.
DiDi Delgado is getting to something really deep here.
I have felt this myself this past year, when I have have endured ever more and more pushback from people who resist contributing to this community; who have to know ‘where the money goes’; if it will be used ‘for a good cause’, who want to know accountability–even as they decline themselves.
It seems that part of the ‘deal’ Black femme activists make in what I am now calling the ‘Racial Justice Industrial Complex’, and one important way I am determined to ‘Break The Contract’ between myself and readers/followers (more on that this week), part of the deal is that the only acceptable way to raise funds is for others, never for our own well being and benefit.
I really want you to take a look at that, and hard.
As writers, both DiDi and I, all of us really, deserve compensation. Period.
Our part of the deal is to give you good, cogent, competent work. If we do that, our side of the contract is fulfilled. Full stop. And that deal should involve neither supplication nor humiliation.
But people, white women specifically, want to be sure that funds go to things they find acceptable. And what they find ‘acceptable’ never allows room for the actual producers of content and labor that they consume. Mark this.
We need to really look at the politics of just why that is. We need to look at the politics and the weathering of why I literally cry every time I do an ask (and why I haven’t done one in months).
We need to look at the violence and insult when people who have never contributed to the health and well being of this community still find the time to complain, in public and in private messages, about the fact that I ‘often’ ask for funding. We need to really interrogate that writers being compensated for work that they consume is met with resistance and hostility–in this cohort, this ‘ride or die’ cohort, this 100%ers cohort.
Lace on Race will be a year old come January.
I have spent the better part of a year hating myself for not having the systemic privilege of not needing compensation; that I cannot ideally do this ‘for love of art and man’; that even as I write words (basically for free) for consumption and other’s benefit, that people will judge me harshly for a paypal link, even as they like and heart and share.
I cannot afford to do this as a vanity project, and some white women seem to take pleasure in using that fact as a cudgel, to punish me, as a proxy for any other Black woman who would dare aspire to a sliver of the economics white women have *specifically because of our agitation and activism on your behalf*, to insure we never demand our due.
And that they will be angered at exactly what DiDi hits at:
“But I’ve learned that nothing is more important than disrupting the status quo and living your life while you got it.
So that’s why I’m going to Cuba tomorrow…
And people will be more upset about me boarding that boat willingly than the way my ancestors were chained to the boats that got me here in the first place. ⛵”
You really need to digest that. People on this page, specifically about race and ethics, have a harder time about me asking for partners for a work *they deem important* than about the systemic barriers that have framed my whole life starting with the Middle Passage.
Part of the Contract Nice White People demand and then brutally enforce is that we have to shame ourselves, humiliate ourselves for even the hope of 50 bucks thrown at us, even as we know that 99% will either ignore or denigrate us for having the gall to ask. (This is what I was talking about, and about which I am still struggling to answer you Karleen Harp–you have to understand it is *not* about the 50 bucks, which i know can be hard to come by–it’s about the condescension and contempt and resentment and thoughtlessness that we are so often forced to swallow along with it)
You’ all of you, all 4000 of you friends, followers and likers, need to really look at the reasons for your clench.
If it is even one part per billion a revulsion of the very idea that Black women are worth it, even one part per billion that you do not want us to be thriving and happy and affirmed and loved more than you feel you are (and how dare we even aspire!) you need to really do the internal work.
And there is no time like the present, and no better place than here. And yes, unless you are one of the less than 100 over the course of these last 11 months who have deigned to contribute to the health and sustainability of this community, I am speaking directly to you.
You need to stop making me hate myself for daring to asking. You need to confront my continuing need *to beg you in the first place*.
You need to stop holding my conviction to do good work regardless hostage by threatening to unlike or unfollow.
DiDi Broke The Contract with her readers years ago. It was audacious, and political, and full of self love and self worth. I will start doing the same.
This is an unapologetic December Ask. There *will* be more. This work deserves to continue, and you all need to step up.
I chose to include DiDi’s links. Help her get to Cuba.
And honor this space you say you value so much to continue by being #101 of people who value both the work I do and myself as a Black woman who deserves to live, not profligately, but well, and who provides a service worth compensation.
Step up. Stop with the white supremacy and leaning on fetid, racist tropes about what *you* feel women of color deserve.
And yes, this–if I lose 3900 of you because of this post, welp. I never really had you, did I? Were you ever really walking?
More on Breaking The Contract to come. Meanwhile, watch “Nanette” by Hannah Gadsby, and find her dialog with Roxanne Gay. Learn from them both.
But before you do that, do your clicks. Starting directly below.
paypal.me/mennolacie
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