4%

“For living within structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive.” – Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” SISTER OUTSIDER (2007)


“Ally-ship is performative or self-glorifying...” while “co-conspirator functions as a verb not a noun” -Bettina Love (2019)

“Would it help if I told you I was 4% Black”? I tried to avoid a quizzical look as he expressed his disappointment in not being able to teach with our organization, Making Us Matter. He was a potential ally who was open to connecting our organization with a tech company. He shared his story about growing up during the height of desegregation and implored me to understand the significance of a space where everyone could learn from each other. I’ve been working in majority-white spaces since I started my career, so I knew how to navigate this road. (1) Don’t show any negative emotion with your face or tone (2) smile and laugh through my own discomfort and frustration in order to provide the most comfortable space for everyone (read: white folks) (3) make sure to be as articulate as possible when explaining something I am passionate about (4) in that articulation make sure that passion can’t be misconstrued as hostile or aggressive (5) be prepared to do all that work with no results or understanding. But what I really wanted to do was pull out my inner Issa Rae.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/1382eb_46358f805c874ae4b9308bd39f0a2849/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Credit @Awkward Black Girl

HBO has a show called Insecure starring Issa Rae, who I’ve been watching since her “Awkward Black Girl'' series. In both shows, Issa is her own personal hype-woman. I call her “mirror Issa”. She looks at her reflection and gives herself all the encouragement she needs to go and do something bold, clapback at her haters, or just tackle a fear. Mirror me would have said something like:

Would it help if I told you I don’t have to navigate shit like this when I am working within our all Black faculty? Would it help if I told you that the same irritation and frustration I have to suppress right now is what students often do in school? What if I told you I can incorporate Tupac and Audre Lorde into my curriculum without someone saying “wHaT AbOuT sHaKeSpEaRe”? Or that I don’t dread staff meetings because we riding on the same wavelength of Black joy and affirmations? Would it help if I told you that being Black can’t be measured by percentage but rather how you are seen in this world? ….No? Well, fuck your 4%... I ain’t Issa though.

Instead, I worked to address his point about desegregation by making sure to share that the Brown vs. Board of education decision was actually detrimental for Black educators. I tried to articulate that I understood that people can learn from each other, but also worked to note that the exodus of Black educators post segregation was the direct result of white families who did not want their children to learn from them. I walked him through the long term damage towards the Black educator pool and retention rates, Essentially, I shared that education cultivates an environment where to be Black and in education is to be

i s o l a t e d.

I delicately made clear the time we put into developing an all-Black staff. I described the hours of conversations we had with students. Students that shared the importance of having a Black educator. After all that, he ended the conversation with, “I’ll check back in five years to see if you guys changed your minds”. Albeit well-meaning, he only reaffirmed our need for an all-Black faculty. He reaffirmed the need for us to have our own space where the work that we do is intentional. In the end, I was disappointed with how well I could perform and make our work palatable under the white gaze. That type of labor is so tired but ultimately, when we say we have an all-Black staff, we mean that.

To be Black and exist in this country requires patience, the ability to navigate racial trauma, and finding ways to manifest beyond the warranted rage. At Making Us Matter we are educators rooted in abolitionist and resistance theory (Love, 2019); (Shange, 2019); (Yang, Tuck, 2013). We have spent years in school districts attempting to explain, convince, articulate, show, all the ways in which they promote and perpetuate antiBlackness, but ain’t no changing a system that don’t want to be changed. So we created our own space that is 100%, not 50%, and definitely not 4% Black. At its heart, Making Us Matter is a Black woman org that finds strength in our collective approach to self-reflection, justice, and joy.