Anti-Blackness Runs Deeper Than Race
When one hears “anti-Black”, most times, people think “anti Black people”. In the past few months, I have come to understand for myself that what manifests as hating or being against a certain kind of people, it actually begins on a much deeper, spiritual level.
I was reading Audre Lorde’s Sister, Outsider and that entire book spoke to my life. (Let me note that it is quite sad that words written and published ~40 years ago are still fully relevant today)
Lorde mentions “The Black mother” in the transcript of a conversation between her and Adrienne Rich. She says that The Black mother is in all of us which is “ — the poet — [that] whispers in our dreams, ‘I feel therefore I can be free.’”
When I read those words of how (white) “men and patriarchal thinkers” have rejected The Black mother that is free, emotional, and darkness, it made me realize that anti-blackness is literally the root of the “fragmented” self. Racism and white hetero-patriarchy have pulled us away from ourselves, white, cishet men included.
White-dominant society has turned into a machine where those in power are ego-centered and are focused solely on profit + control. The machine of our culture creates fragments of individuals unattached to their soul, their spirit, their body or any other higher energies. The white male dominant culture is set up so that people cannot and are not allowed to stop to feel, be, connect back to themselves or any higher frequencies. (This is why when the pandemic began and the world “stopped” people appeared to “wake up”) It turns humans into a machine, producing and working 24/7 feeding people with false hope and promises while they continue to be exploited.
Shadow work is simply integrating the “dark” and “unfavorable” aspects of ourself. Shadow work seems “scary” because this “dominant” (I use that word loosely) society has deemed black as “bad” because whiteness has to mean “good” for their ideas to be upheld. White became pure, clean, divine, and blackness became something to fear because it is the opposite of pure, clean, and divine.
Darkness/blackness is bad, therefore Blackness (read Black people) is bad. If darkness is bad then the shadows are bad and practices that come from Black (and Indigenous) cultures are “bad” and “wrong”. That has always been interesting because cultures made of BIPoC usually involve reverencing nature and the spirit world. There are practices and rituals in place to bring people back to themselves, to bring their souls back to their bodies.
In the void, there is so much space, so much room for an infinite amount of possibility. Most of our universe is dark. The womb is dark. From darkness comes life. Yet, we are taught to fear and eventually hate what is BLACK.
Racism and imperialism has made people afraid of themselves, regardless of what race they fall under. People are afraid of their shadow side, they are afraid of the darkness that is within them therefore they cannot love that part, creating continuous fragmentation within the mind, body and spirit while simultaneously fragmenting the mind, body, and spirit from each other. Of course many people are unhappy with their lives and experiencing depression, they can feel that they themselves are not “unified” internally, but cannot fully see the cause. Even depression has a purpose (to allow yourself to DEcomPRESS), but depression is looked at as a disease and many people medicate (whether self-medicate or prescription medication) and still do not find/embody the wholeness they are searching for. Instead they are left with that “hollow” and empty feeling that so many people talk about. Something is missing, but they don’t know what it is.
The darkness (the depression, the anger, the fear, the hopelessness) is actually where you learn and remember yourself. In the darkness is where you remember who you are.
White male heteronormative-patriarchy also looks down on feelings, stillness, emotions, and witnessing. This kind of masculinity is toxic and unbalanced. Feelings, stillness, emotions, witnessing, receiving…that is all The Black mother, Divine Femininity. This culture takes us out of our bodies and into our minds. The body has its own wisdom that is comprised of higher frequency, condensed. The mind does not have authority, but because of psychological and social conditioning, we have been taught to believe that the brain is the only voice of reason, the only thing that is right. The body is where we feel, and process emotions. The body itself is dark inside, so it gets rejected because…anti-blackness. People do not remember how to trust their inner knowing, they doubt it’s validity because white male heteronormative patriarchy demands tangible proof, information, and data, which is the opposite of intuition and knowing.
For unbalanced masculinity to remain in power, there needs to be an erasure of what would and can wipe it out. So we are taught that showing and expressing feelings and emotions is not okay. We are taught that stillness and rest = lazy and unproductive. We are taught that we have to take and possess because if you witness and observe, someone will take the thing, which is lack mentality.
Of course anti-Blackness has caused so much harm, not only to Black people, but to EVERYONE. Anti-blackness, anti-darkness, anti-Divine Feminine is the most destructive force on this planet because they use it to keep people fragmented and easy to control.
Imagine if we were taught and encouraged to feel our emotions. Imagine if we had multiple healthy outlets to express ourselves. Imagine if we were encouraged to rest, to tap back into ourselves, to sit and meditate. Imagine how aware of our fullness and truly uncontrollable we would be. The world would be completely different. We would feel, therefore we would be free.
It is time to investigate where this anti-Blackness really stems from because racism and external anti-Blackness are only physical manifestations of what is occurring within each individual being and within our society. It’s time that we stop being afraid of the dark. The darkness is where our answers are and the darkness is inside. The change starts within. Decolonization starts within.
