Racial gazes

These damn thumbtacks sit alongside I’m sorry but why are you coming for me and not my ideas.

 

This is not a spoken word event. I will not be conditioning myself to alternative ways of communicating so that I’m more palatable.  All I'm doing is talking so let's talk about this.

 

Not too long ago I was talking to someone about catalyst events. They are moments in my life that remind me of my position in society. And I'm not going to claim that I'm a woman of colour or claim that I'm white, those terms have been so fluctuant and so sensitive to me for so long. My whiteness and my blackness comes through in moments that I decide and I dictate. However, the world has systems in which it provokes me. it provokes my whiteness and my blackness which are terms that the world and systems around me decided to designate my attitudes. But I digress in saying that this is how I described those catalysts events.

 

Every day I stand on a thumbtack, and by the time I see it it's too late and I’ve already stood in it. And I’ve had it for the day. I let the people around me know, shit I stood in a thumbtack and my foot is fucking sore.

And the next day I wake up and I've forgotten the bruise of the thumbtack until I start walking again. And I carry on with my day, just remembering the thumbtack like an itch on the side of your leg. But I don't talk about it was yesterday's news.

Until the next day, I stand in another thumbtack and this one was stuck in my shoe, someone put it there. And the cycle continues these thumbtacks arrive in different places in different days, in which I do not see them until it's too late.

For me I know I'm lucky in the scope of thumbtacks, they’re quite small thumbtacks and for the most part, I don't stand on knives and bear traps, they don't kill me. And say because overtime I don’t really talk about them anymore yes my feet have gone numb but I still get to walk. My family also stands on thumbtacks occasionally they'll stand on bear traps. so yes we are shocked that people would put so many thumbtacks around and it's not a matter of us walking around them they location change every day. But also who the fuck is putting out thumbtacks, like why. What’s going on here who said it's ok to do that

 

But I assume everybody has those thumbtacks that remind them of their position in society.

 

Am I frustrated by the idea that I’ve reduced repetitive disruptive racial behaviour down to a thumbtack, well yes. But yall don’t seem to get the point otherwise.

 

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