❝ Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

❝ History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first black person held in newly constructed prisons, or the first black person forcibly recruited to work on a colonial plantation. But black people have been arriving late ever since, hoping that the slavers have left, the ships traveled beyond the horizon, the whip silenced, the work done, the suffering gone.
Black time—whether you call it colored people time (CPT) or African timing (AT) or the deliciousness of syncopation—black time is about delay, interruption, break: strategic lateness.
Black time is long time, deep time, waiting time, excavated time, time around time. The not-here, the not-yet-there, the it-will-be-coming, the it-has-been-to-come, the it’s-not-wasn’t-yet, the it-was-just-here-yet-to-be-now. The fold, the crease, the wrinkle, the tick that does not tock. The tock that does not talk. The silence that does not break. The breaking that will not be broken. The.
You-just-missed-it.
Black time is hungry time. Ravenous time. Gluttonous time. Cannibal time.
Black time is waiting time, time after the reservation, time after other people’s time, time cut by other people’s time, time as didn’t-see-you, time as can-you-wait, time as you-again, time as I-don’t-have-time-for-this-shit.
Black time is dropped consonants, slipped sounds, skipped beats, don’t-wanna-ain’t-gonna-coz-it-don’t-make-no-difference time. Black time is learned time, doing time, time done, time-to-do, time-never-done, time-undone. Time-served, time-to-serve, time-serving, time-unserved, time-put-off, time-for-time, pipeline-time, skipping-time, cut-time, time-cut, cutting-time.
I haven’t seen you for a minute.
Sorry I’m posting this late. I was running behind.
– Black Time, Keguro Macharia

❝ 

Despite my theory and textbooks, it wasn’t until I experienced the real life, redemptive, feminist side of masculinity that I could grasp its potential as a site of resistance. It wasn’t until I came to care for and love masculine-of-center performing folks within my own queer community, many of whom experience daily oppression and structural violence themselves, that I understood: a revolutionary reconstitution of masculinity was not only possible, it was here already.

I’ve seen masculinity deployed as revolutionary love. I’ve witnessed a masculinity that is vulnerable and also unafraid. I know that the masculine can be a site of resistance to the heteropatriarchial capitalist society that gave birth to it. I know because when I look to my trans* brothers, or to the butches, studs, bois and other masculine presenting folks in community, I see evidence of it. This resistance often lies in the redefining or dissolution of arbitrary binaries like ‘masculine and feminine.’ For example, is it considered masculine to give birth to and raise a child? In my community: yes. That in itself is resistance. It is revolutionary to see masculine-of-center folks resisting and reconstituting dominant masculine mores to treat women and feminine-of-center folks with kindness, love, openness and respect — and those are the values I see represented in my community. As a woman, I am made safe and loved by a community of masculine-of-center people, many of whom enjoy less privilege than myself.

This is not to say that masculinity functions purely as a positive force within the queer community, far from it. But in my experience, critical conversations around masculinity outside of the queer community have not always made the necessary space for positive criticism. I had a singular conception of masculinity as a destructive social force for some time. If you asked me now, I would still agree that masculinities, which appeal to ‘hegemonic patriarchy,’ are destructive. Yet, I am also a witness to the good that can be found in feminist masculinities.

❝ Seemingly unaware of my presence, these young men talked about their plans to fuck as many girls from other racial/ethnic groups as they could “catch” before graduation. They “ran” it down. Black girls were high on the list, Native American girls hard to find, Asian girls (all lumped into the same category), deemed easier to entice, were considered “prime targets.” Talking about this over-heard conversation with my students, I found that it was commonly accepted that one “shopped” for sexual partners in the same way one “shopped” for courses at Yale, and that race and ethnicity was a serious category on which selections were based. To these young males and their buddies, fucking was a way to confront the Other, as well as a way to make themselves over, to leave behind white “innocence” and enter the world of “experience.” As is often the case in this society, they were confident that non-white people had more life experience, were more worldly, sensual, and sexual because they were different. Getting a bit of the Other, in this case engaging in sexual encounters with non-white females, was considered a ritual of transcendence, a movement out into a world of difference that would transform, an acceptable rite of passage.

❝ 

‎Later that night
I held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

It answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

❝ Our society is often described as patriarchal—a society ruled by aging fathers concerned first and foremost with passing on the patrimony. At the risk of being glib, however, I’d suggest that it might be more accurate to say that we have a filiarchal society—a society ruled almost entirely by sons—by very young men. Certainly boys—especially white heterosexual boys—are the most privileged creatures in the Western social hierarchy. They are forgiven almost everything in life—and are forgiven everything in art.

❝ Your skin must be sensitive enough for the lightest kiss and thick enough to ward off the sneers. If you are going to spit in the eye of the world, make sure your back is to the wind.

❝ I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, “Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.” But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?

❝ 

We are more than the worst thing that’s ever
happened to us. All of us need to stop apologizing
for having been to hell and come back breathing.

Your bad dreams are battle scars.
What doesn’t kill you cuts you fucking deep
but scars are just skin growing back
thicker when it heals.