Essay.
There is no hiding the fact that black suffering is plaguing the black community whether it is being done personally or through images and videos shown on social media and news outlets. Black suffering is the phenomenon that blacks have been in a constant state of pain and struggle since the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The pain and struggle have continued into generational trauma and modern-day slavery through the school to prison pipeline, modern-day lynching, and other ways of racism being present in the 21 century. A common characteristic of the black community is that we are resilient despite the painful history and injustices of today and through this description of the black community it is evident that they have defied what was meant for us when we first came to this land. The black community has built a life for ourselves to operate and live out the freedom we now have. Although many from the black community decided to preserver in the face of adversity many, if not all, blacks deal with generational trauma passed down from slavery. This generational trauma is sustained through images of black beings/bodies who have been killed for no other reason than “breathing while black” (Ross, 2020, p. 7), and these images inevitably impact the way that black people navigate their way in this world. Because of the dichotomy of being a victim and thriving in a world that feeds racist ideology, the mental and physical state of black freedom seems almost nonapparent. With this in mind, I began to question why enslaved people in the United States chose to keep living? While I acknowledge those who chose to end their lives by jumping over the slave ship because they believed that being dead would be better than life controlled, I question why did not all of our African ancestors have this same framework of thinking. Would have it been better to die than to suffer the pains of being used as chattel for labor? I have no other answer to this question other than they must have seen further than what they were physically faced with, which was freedom. I will be exploring this same question but in today’s context of why we as a black community continue to fight for tomorrow when today is filled with pain. I will be exploring this question by digging into the following concepts: freedom dreaming, explained by Bettina L. Love; fugitivity, spoken through the lenses of Kihana Miraya Ross; and an embodied movement concept, memory escaping, by Lela Aisha Jones.
All three of these concepts deal with the positionality of freedom, to understand how freedom is the constant pursuit for black America we have to discuss the question of where are we finding freedom from, which brings me to fugitivity. Kihana Miraya Ross (2020), from her book The Future is Black, states that understanding fugitivity “reminds (people) that [fugitivity] is not just a word we may use to signal escape from educational (and I would add- all) suffering, but rather, it is tied to flesh and fear and tenacity of black folks attempting to escape the suffocating dehumanization of chattel slavery” (p.9). Enslaved black people were labeled as fugitives when they escaped their home of bondage to find a state of being of freedom. From then till now, blacks are still on a continual quest to escape from racist policies, officials, police officers, teachers, bosses, and neighbors. Fred Moten describes in a talk with Saidiya Hartman entitled “The Black Outdoors” (2016), that “the escape is always on you”. The idea that the escape is inescapable labels those who are escaping as fugitives for life. As long as black people are subject to victimization because of their skin color, a fugitive is what black people will always be. Fugitivity is shown when we stare at a video of a black man running away from a police officer only to be captured in the back by a gunshot. It is not about who or what they are running from, but what or who are they running to. Blacks are figuratively and literally running to freedom.
Although freedom is what black people are in the pursuit of, being trapped in a world that leaves black people victim to anti-black violence deters black people from that goal. Lela Aisha Jones’s activity memory escaping explores the question of whether people can escape their embodied memories. The activity details three people in a circle with the fourth person in the center. The person in the center thinks of a memory and creates three short embodied movement of that memory and gives one movement to each of the people standing outside of the circle. The job of the people in the outer circle is to repeat the movement that was given to them, while it is the job of the person in the center to dance and not repeat any movements that the people on the outside do while looking at them. The inquiry that is being explored is whether one can escape their embodied memories and what type of work does it require to escape their embodied memory. Participating as the person in the center was much more challenging than what I thought it was going to be. In the activity, I thought I successfully opposed the dance movements that the other three people did in front of me; however, many observers of the activity pointed out specific moments where I copied the movements of the other dancers. The fact that I mimicked the movements that I tried so hard to not do, pointed out a message that I believe is very true in 2020. I am connected to my trauma and my past when it keeps presenting itself to me; I will inevitably be influenced by my past when my present reminds me of it. Freedom is not a feeling that passively passes by, but an action that must be constantly worked out in the face of injustices that are experienced daily.
Freedom in the African diaspora is accessed through the action of fugitivity. Freedom can be described as having complete autonomy over my thoughts, decisions, and actions throughout my life without being subject to bondage. Some Scholars and philosophers would argue that blacks have never been free and never will be. If we, those of African descent, will never attain freedom then the freedom we and our ancestors were on the pursuit of is/was false, and the only goal for black people today to do is survive. Bettina L. Love (2019) states, in her book We Want To Do More Than Survive, that educational survival has to be eradicated and replaced with ideologies that promote and reach for true freedom for black students. This is the same type of logic that we must adopt as a black community. A concept that Love introduces in her book is freedom dreaming and its vitalness in society to push for a better future. Love describes “these dreams (are) not whimsical, unattainable daydreams, (but) critical and imaginative dreams of collective resistance” (p.101). Freedom dreaming is what our ancestors did when they rebelled against their slave masters. It is because those who were enslaved knew their existence could be present in a different circumstance than the one they were in. Without freedom dreaming then there is no hope, and there is no acknowledgment and honor to those who have done the work of radical black resistance.
A major threat to freedom in the black community begins with black youth. Love speaks about how teachers and administrators can do students great harm when there is a lack of co-conspires in education. The lack of true partnering with black students and families to harbor a safe and free environment leads to spirit murdering (Love, 2019, p.34-35). Ways to combat spirit murdering is to give students space -fugitivity- where freedom dreaming can take place. Students should be learning for the sake of change and the only way change can happen is for students to be able to imagine a world different from what are living in. Due to the constant reminders of anti-blackness (memory escaping), black students would benefit in a space (fugitivity) where they can form ideas and arrangements to be free and create a future where freedom exists (freedom dreaming).
These concepts collide together under the umbrella of attaining freedom. When our ancestors would escape to places such as sacred groves or maroon societies, they would be partaking in fugitivity towards freedom. These sacred groves and maroon societies are places where freedom dreaming is done and is often achieved. Their freedom dreaming was not only through their physical momentary escape but a foretelling of the freedom their generation would experience later. Scared groves and maroonage are historical examples of what it means to be freedom while also bearing the branding of a white man’s property. While in the 2020s black bondage does not look the same as it did in the 1800s, our freedom is still subject to white supremacist systems. White supremacist systems lead their way to remind black people of the continual struggle they have to endure just to feel some amount of freedom. In addition to the struggle for freedom, freedom dreaming and fugitivity are also concepts that work alongside one another when working towards black liberation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. refused the positionality of blacks to whites in the United States. Dr. King had a dream where black would socially and economically be on the same playing field. Although the black community is in constant oppression to attain full freedom, the work towards it is still alive and well.
Works Cited
Duke Franklin Humanities Institute. (2016, October 5). The Black Outdoors: Fred and Saidiya Hartman at Duke University. [Video]. Youtube.
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
“Memory Escape.” By Lela Aisha Jones. Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 17 September 2020.
Ross, K. M. (2020). On Black Education. In The Future is Black: Afropessimism, Fugitivity, and Radical Hope in Education (pp. 7-13). Milton, England: Taylor & Francis.
Video.