Watching, Seeing, Listening, Remembering

A couple days after the election, I had an impactful conversation at my dinner table with one of my best friends, who is a black woman here at Rhodes. We frequently discuss all manner of nuanced and relevant issues, race being one of them. She asked me how I was feeling post-election, and I vented for a bit before citing a Facebook status posted by another black female friend here at Rhodes as well as a poem read by a black female student at the English event a few days after the election. The status had been a complain of how this particular black woman felt like many of her white friends did not have their money where their mouths were; they spent a lot of time coming up to her and hugging her, casting her sympathetic glances, etc., but she didn’t want to be hugged or pitied, and they weren’t actually doing anything to help alleviate her burdens, nor were they seeming to try to learn how to do so. The poem read at the event likewise stuck with me. A particularly strong verse read along the lines of, “65% of you voted against me, so excuse me for seeing one of you and rounding up.” The refrain of the poem (in the voice of her white female friends) was an exhausting, invasive, never-ending, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” In short, she had become a spectacle.

As I shared this last bit with my friend at the dinner table that Thursday night, her eyes got big and she emphatically responded, “YES. That is exactly how I feel. I locked myself in my room yesterday as soon as I could because I felt like I was being observed, like people were just waiting for me to break down or fly into a rage. I hadn’t even processed it yet. I still haven’t processed it. But I feel like everyone is waiting to watch me process it. I feel like a spectacle.”

I listened amazed, not at all having experienced this the day after the election, or ever before, for that matter. As we discussed in class today, opposing realities can and do coexist. The kind of surveillance that my black female friends and peers have expressed is not my truth, but that does not make it not theirs. I feel like I keep saying this on these posts, but I am becoming ever more convinced of the importance of listening. Perhaps we (I’m especially referring to white people here) would all do better to prioritize listening over watching. I think resolving to listen instead of watch (and we all know that America has a history of making spectacles of black people and their suffering) does work towards leveraging the privilege and the power we inherited when we born into white bodies. When we watch for black people to react or respond or process or suffer, we are choosing to take advantage of the control we unfairly have received in that situation. The watching is on our terms, without their permission, sometimes without their knowledge. But to listen, we first must be given the opportunity to hear. We must be invited into a space where black experiences are openly and willingly shared with white listeners. Especially here at Rhodes, we are very often invited (as a campus) to these events; we would do well to go.

 I remember feeling incredibly invasive after watching the videos of Philando Castile’s and Alton Sterling’s deaths. Now, I can better understand why. This is a complicated subject, because as human beings, we are extremely visual and can often better understand and empathize when we see what happened. Apartheid and the Holocaust both come to mind. Photographic and videographic evidence also ensure (I hope) that these events be recorded for all future generations to see and learn from. Additionally, justice is (or should be…) more likely served with visual incrimination. However, the lack of recent indictments (even with indisputable video evidence) does not support this ideal.

Perhaps our best route to take is in listening to the grieving families’ requests. In Philando Castile’s case, it was his girlfriend (who, I believe, is mother of his child) in the passenger seat next to him that recorded the video and shared it live to Facebook. This indicates that she wanted the video to be seen. Emmett Till’s family, similarly, opted for an open casket to publicize, without question, the inhumanity and animality of what happened to him. It is deeply unjust and problematic, though, that such measures are necessary for black validation and for justice to be served – and, as stated earlier, sometimes even these sacrifices on the part of black mourners prove not to be enough.

Here, I think there is a necessary distinction to draw between watching and seeing (see the article linked below, entitled “Everyone Watches, Nobody Sees: How Black Women Disrupt Surveillance Theory”.) I find Mark 8:18 to be particularly resonant here, when Jesus asks, “having eyes, do you not see, and having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?”  We should not just be endeavoring to hear and see but also doing the work it takes to remember. 

https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/everyone-watches-nobody-sees-how-black-women-disrupt-surveillance-theory