Eugenic and nationalist imaginaries are retelling the same old stories of a favored “race” with God-given superiority and the church’s blessing to steal land predestined to be colonized. It’s a “Master Narrative” set, the Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and Survival of the Fittest repackaged. It is also the reason why some writers write.
We are pencil-pushing and cleaning up history. We are keying data and citing our sources of self-regard. Thank you, Toni Morrison.
We are patiently waiting for the words to come to us and holding our tongues lest we interrupt them as they gather, lining up behind our teeth. Either way, as vessels, we are trusting the process and for me, the Muse.
We are often creating while destitute of the silence, stillness, time and space it takes to pen it down. The conditions are never right to draft a vision of a future world that is truer, braver and safer for all human beings and every living thing.
We are often creating out of nothing and out of necessity—lest we succumb to the meager and insufficient words around us. We are responding to a nudge or a nagging voice, which, when heard, means, “Write that down.” AI could never!
Amiri Baraka wrote in “Technology and Ethos” in 1969:
“Nothing has to look or function the way it does. The West man’s freedom, unscientifically got at the expense of the rest of the world’s people, has allowed him to xpand his mind— spread his sensibility wherever it cdgo, & so shaped the world, & its powerful artifact-engines.”
He posits that this technology developed from a “freedom” obtained through the exploitation of others, shaping the world according to Western perspectives. Baraka advocates for a different kind of technology—one that is more humanistic, rooted in consciousness and spirituality and not dictated by power or Western ideals.
The writer is a witness. The core of bearing witness through writing lies in the act of documenting and preserving memories, acknowledging their existence, and creating a record of events, emotions, and personal truths. It allows individuals and communities to speak their truth and challenge dominant narratives.
Raised writing utensil or hand before swooping down on the keys, the writer must tell it, can’t help but spell it out. We cannot keep our side of the story to ourselves but must spill our guts and thus, the beans.
Why? “Because those who monopolize resources monopolize imagination,” Ruha Benjamin teaches us in Imagination: A Manifesto.
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive,” Audre Lorde explained. It is the reason why when it comes to the racial imagination, I try to leave little to it.
Because sociologist Patricia Hill Collins is right when she describes stereotypes as “controlling images.” It is best we imagine ourselves for ourselves, as the “white imagination” is a dangerous place to be. Claudia Rankine also makes it clear that it is safer this way: “because white men can’t police their imagination black men are dying.”
So, I punch keys and push back on attacks on personhood. Indentations are reminders of the importance of place-making. We are all somebody: somebody’s baby, somebody’s sibling, somebody’s parent, somebody’s entire world.
Writing is also resistance. It is an act of defiance to say, “That’s not how my story goes. That’s not how I see it and that sounds nothing like me.”
Because the storymakers of colonialism and patriarchy will talk over you. The storymakers of racism and white-body supremacy will tell stories about you. They’ll put adjectives and their agendas ahead of you.
So, tell your story before they do. Be a witness and write like the future depends on you.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
