racism – Yvet Youssef

If we do not grieve, as human beings, our Soul dies.
If we do not express our fury, it metastasizes.
If we do not rage against injustice, injustice will eat us alive, one by one.

There are different types of anger. James Baldwin (one of the most visionary writers in U.S.-American history) distinguished between 2 types of anger: The anger that stems from fear and the anger that rises up from a person in the face of oppression and injustice.

We have to learn to recognize the difference. Within ourselves and in other people. You can feel the difference if you pay attention.

A Black woman yelling that Black Lives Matter holds a different anger than a white man yelling at protesters that they should be arrested. The first is a righteous, justified, holy response to oppression. It is real. The second is an expression of fear: the fear of losing control, or power; the fear of disruption of the status quo. It’s “anger” as a placeholder for something else.

James Baldwin said: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain”.

That pain – underneath it all. If we do not address that pain, if we repress it in an attempt not to feel it, our Soul dies. Once our Soul is numb and deadened, we are capable of so much violence. As individuals and as a collective.

Look at the state of our Earth, our societies. How much harm we cause each other and our planet. One of the reasons this destruction is possible is because we have – for generations upon generations – refused to deal with pain. It is like we have repressed grieving for so long we barely even know where to begin.

The reluctance or refusal to feel pain means to accept that this pain will be projected onto others instead. This is a natural law. We can’t escape this. Pain travels along in subtle or unsubtle ripples of violence if we do not scoop it up and address it, unfold it, sit with it, feel it. In family systems, social inequality, addiction, oppression, genocide or ecocide: It will boil up somewhere – and it will do harm. Everything is connected like that.

Here, my (only) hope for our world is this: May we grieve. Feel the discomfort. Feel the unbelievable sorrow of all the harm we have done to others and the harm that was done to us. It’s a prerequisite for accessing true joy or peace. We have to go through it.

I am the descendant of oppressors and the oppressed. Both of those lineages carry so much pain. It is messy and complex. May I feel it and move through it to release it. May I live unafraid of discomfort.

This is a matter of accountability. Maturity. Care. And ultimately: A matter of Liberation. For everyone.

So I get to decide on a whim to travel the globe,
Climb on some pyramids,
Dance til the morning hours in Lisbon,
Wait for a tube on a London platform,
Eat msemen in Marrakesh,
Avec jus d’avocat aux fruit secs – sans amande
Of course (allergies)
I get to travel in and out of North Africa to my heart’s content
(And my heart is kinda needy these days)
This is my freedom for being born North of the Mediterranean Sea
My parents chose these Netherlands over Egyptian soil and I could pay for my passport
With a lifetime of “where are you from’s?” from fellow citizens.
But at the border
My red booklet with golden inscription of this tiny kingdom
Erases all questions
Grants entry with a casual nod from tired agents in funny glass boxes:
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome

So I dance in the desert,
Meet family at Khan el-Khalili for shisha and nànà,
Drift on the waters of the Nile at sunset,
Feel at home in the homes of relatives and friends
Ahlen Ahlen Ahlen ya Habibti!!!
Marhaba
Alhamdulillah!

But when we make plans for those very same family members and friends
To visit the Netherlands,
To eat warme stroopwafels at the Saturday market,
To see their cousin perform music on stage,
To walk along the gorgeous grachten of my hometown,
To talk and laugh in cozy cafes til midnight,
To dance to electronic music in my favorite clubs,
To share my city with them,
We are halted in the imaginary container of nice ideas
Where “Inshallah” does not suffice.

Because even with officiated invitations and detailed descriptions and entirely explicated intentions of travel and family background checks and names and dates of birth and education history and income statements and work records and references and fees upon fees upon some more fees payed and all of this fucking information stacked up in piles at the immigration offices covered in sweat and nerves and goodwill and hope

Their visas are denied

Not enough evidence
Not enough information
Not enough effort ploughing through bureaucratic mazes to be granted
Entrance through the hermetically sealed gates of Europe
And never an accountable human to call and ask
“What the fuck?”
“Why???”

I stare at my passport at the bottom of my travel bag still covered in Sahara sand
And I am flooded with that overwhelming nausea you only get from feeling
Injustice
Viscerally
Shame and guilt and anger arise
That my freedom comes from long histories of violence and oppression
That my passport is a discriminatory document
An official instrument of legal exclusion
Of inequality
Of racist ideology
Of human sickness

And to be honest with you, I don’t know what to do.
I try to call offices where nobody is ever responsible for anything to protest to no avail, and I write it out in long refrain. But I don’t know what to do about this diseased world we have inherited, this sick system nobody seems to have the keys to.

All I know is that globalization is a myth
White supremacy is real
Colonization never ended
And every single freedom we have is tainted
If it is somehow linked to the oppression of others.

The nationstate is a perverted story
Fed to us by the bloody hands of history.
A violence so normalized
We wave flags for it.

Tag: racism

Collective Grief Work

PRIVILEGE