On Hope in an Age of Injustice
Pablo Neruda was a powerhouse of poetry. Possibly every university undergraduate in the western world who has ever tried to to impress a crush has been made aware of the potency of his romantic verses. Every line is full and flowing over with feeling. His command of imagery sings in Spanish and somehow manages to maintain the lion’s share of its quality translated. One of my most enduring literary memories is reading “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” as an 18 year old and feeling utterly shook, like someone had just run up on me and jacked all of my worldly belongings at gunpoint.
In recent months I’ve been returning to Neruda (and Maya, and Langston, and many other poets) to try and find voice for a persistent ache. As we are well aware, 2015 was not kind to people of colour in the US and Canada. And with the suspicious death of 16-year old Gynnya McMillen in police custody, 2016 is shaping up to be more of the same.
The list of offences is so long, so gut-punching, so broad in scope and varied in location that it nearly defies description. Every day, one event after another event of horrific violence against women, men and children of colour takes place. Young and old, trans and cis, rich and poor — all harvested like pure cotton blossoms and unwillingly woven into the gaudy tapestry of white supremacy.
Despite the ongoing failings of most of the mainstream media to report these tragedies well and to report a great many of them at all, the democratization of information has provided us with the means to bear witness to more of this horror than has ever been possible. The begging, the wheezing, the exasperated explanations, the screaming, the rhythmic pop-pop-pop of a pistol fired over and over again, the slumping of the body. Then there are the so-called investigations, the unending studies and occasionally even (in Canada, anyway) the occasional policy change, all of which have served to display nothing but a widespread unwillingness to hold those who target, attack and destroy our bodies to account. In the face of all of this, the body of writing in the past few years about these cases, these policies, and the remarkably resilient edifice of white supremacy is staggering.
Yet somehow, despite all of the lessons to soak up, all of the work to be done, and all of the productive and difficult conversations that are to be had, I find myself repeatedly dragged into a very different conversation.
“Why are you being so cynical?”
“I know this is tragic, but why is your take on it so… depressing?”
“How will this inspire people to act?”
“Why don’t you say that you think we can do better?”
“We’ve fixed problems like this before! Why not talk about that too?”
“Where is the hope?”
Hope. People keep bringing up hope. And every time I read it on a screen or hear it wielded like a cudgel in conversation it’s like I’m rooting around in the fridge but I can’t for the life of me find where that funny smell is coming from.
Of course, it must said that there are many interesting, and even valuable conversations to be had here. Is hope even useful when considering history or literature? If so, what do people mean when they invoke hope? How does that meaning change when coupled with different lived experience? What about with different levels of knowledge and education? Or different amounts and intersections of privilege? For me, the concept of hope is so deeply rooted in my particular religious and cultural traditions. How have other people come to an understanding of this concept? Additionally, my adult political consciousness experienced its initial refining in the crucible of the Obama ’08 presidential campaign. Because of that, I intimately understand that hope can be a vibrant, compelling and disturbingly nebulous political tool. Can there actually be a universalized and secularized understanding of hope that isn’t complete nonsense?
These are questions that I will be kicking around — and likely returning to — for some time. But one thing we can do right now is underline what hope definitely is not.
Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not your safety blanket for when a conversation gets too difficult. Hope is not a get out of jail free card that allows you to bypass facing the ugliness of the present. So I’m very sorry y’all, but if you do draw hope from the deck, you may not use it to pass Go and collect $200. Hope is not a blunt instrument you may wield for the defense of your comfort. Hope is not a trump card to win an argument. If you are using “let me play devil’s advocate for a moment” and hope in the same line of thinking, you are doing it wrong. Hope is not a sedative and you may not dispense it as such, especially not with that crudely decontextualized quote from Dr. King that you’re trying to peddle as a prescription.
Now that we’re clear on that, I’d like to end with Neruda, who knew this all intimately well. So well, in fact, that he explored these truths in his writing and in his actions on the world stage until he was assassinated in his hospital bed by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The words speak for themselves.
