Unbearable intersections: Blackness, Queerness, Gender and the anti-black State

*I have corrected details in this post after speaking with Rahzie. I apologize for mishearing parts of her story at the rally this morning and I acknowledge I should have checked my version before posting. mea culpa.

On February 23, Syracuse Black Lives Matter leader, long-time community activist and advocate for Black youth, Rahzie Seals, was beaten up by four men. Rahzie is a queer Black woman. She went to the mall with a friend to buy clothes for a friend’s funeral–another queer black woman who died suddenly earlier this year–and she was beaten up in the mall lobby outside of Macy’s department store, under bright lights and in front of a number of witnesses, none of whom did anything to stop the violence.

Calling her “dyke” and “lesbian bitch” a number of young Black men attacked her physically.  Just days before the attack, Rahzie had finished raising money to send Syracuse Black youth to see the opening of Black Panther on February 16-17. She had hoped to raise $3500 and ended up raising about $10,000. Rahzie is known, she has been in the trenches for years fighting for reparative justice for African Americans in Syracuse. The young men who slurred her and beat her ran away, and mall security was less than responsive or helpful. Rahzie’s friend got her to the car and they headed to the hospital. Rahzie’s head was bleeding and throbbing. She had trouble standing up. On their way to the emergency room, the police called her and instructed her to come into the precinct office for questioning. She did as she was told, but she required paramedics to help her get in the building, and despite her pleas and the pleas of her friends, the police did not release her for medical attention until they completed an interrogation. The victim was treated as a suspect.

Rahzie ended up in the hospital with a concussion.

It is clear to me that if she had been white, the police would have met her at the hospital. But of course, it is clear to me that if Rahzie had been white, those mall witnesses wouldn’t have been so passive, and the mall security would have been more helpful, and maybe those young men would not have targeted her.

The truly unbearable aspect of this horrible story, juxtaposed so tightly to the trauma of violent attack that it is hard to think them separately, is the non-choice, the unchoice Rahzie now faces. Should she press charges against these young men, boys whose families she knows? Should she offer up more young, black bodies to a “justice” system that regularly beats and abuses Black inmates, often submitting them to over 200 hours of solitary confinement? How can she? But should she refuse to press charges and let violence against queers go unremarked? How can she? Should she focus on the lethargy and illegalities of mall security and Syracuse police? She is terrified of them.

Rahzie’s very body is on the line and she feels the demands of an impossible calculation: pitting Black lives against queer lives, queer lives against Black male lives, women against men. It’s impossible. Rahzie wouldn’t, she couldn’t, articulate this calculation so starkly. Her voice stumbles and cracks as she tries to talk about what happened to her. Her blood flowed into the gap between identities that should be bolstering each other up, but instead are pulling each other apart. The intersectional particularities of this attack have laid bare the precarities of being Black, of being a Black woman, of being a Black Queer woman.

Rahzie’s utter vulnerability comes from two well-worn truths of American society: the lack of deep reparative justice in Syracuse African American wages, housing, jobs, and schools; and the excess of anti-black racism in the police system.

Know Rahzie’s story. Tell it. Advocate for justice for queer, Black, and female bodies in your communities, and protest police racism, brutality, and lack of accountability.

Willy 1er: The affectscape of grief

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affect, affectscape, grief

  A few weeks ago, I watched a small French indie film, Willy 1er (Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, 2016). Billed as a comedy, I find that at its core, the film is about loss and dearth. It’s about the loss that death brings screeching around the corner of your life, crashing into you headlong, and forcing you (limping and bloodied) to take notice. And it’s about the dearth of social connections born (that is, suffered) by society’s marginalized, almost like some sadistic sociological experiment that investigates how many robust relationships can be snipped away before The Human Subject simply goes mad.

  Daniel Vannet stars as both the title character and his twin brother, Michel. The brothers are corpulent, middle-aged men, mentally disabled, and living at home with their parents. They both work at blowing leaves and other yard maintenance at a local park, and Willy loves to watch Michel “make donuts” with his car by spinning round and round in the same direction. It is a simple life. We have to suppose it was too simple for Michel. One day he hangs himself.

Willy takes notice of this death by finally resisting his parents’ counsel. “I’ll move to the city,” he says, “buy a scooter, get an apartment, find some mates, and you can stuff yourselves!”

He does as he threatens. His mates are not, perhaps, the best choices, but Willy I is oblivious to social nuance. At his new job at a grocery store, he meets Willy II, a queer, and it takes Willy I a long time to befriend Willy II and then to understand why his “mates” don’t accept this newcomer to the group. Willy I and Willy II are a different sort of twin. Their shared name only draws viewer attention to the ways in which they share an affectscape of isolation and desperation, and how they both cling stubbornly to small, even negligible, threads of certain identity.

What really blew me away, however, is how the Boukherma brothers generate ghosts as the affective correlates of the two Willys’ grief. A transparent Michel appears outside Willy I’s window, or stands beside him in the road. The ghost conveys the way in which death is carried physically, relationally, and bodily by the one who grieves. We see how that spirit-presence is only sometimes present, even while the grief-work is persistent.

  I wish I could find an image of the other ghost. Here is the scene of his arrival. Willy I is finally telling Willy II about his brother’s death. He talks of a suicide he can’t believe in because he can’t fathom it. It doesn’t make sense, he says. Willy II understands. He tells Willy I his own story, how five years ago he lost the boyfriend he’d lived with for four years. The boyfriend had been a cop, but the death was just a stupid accident. Something went wrong with the car. It doesn’t make any sense, he says, twinning Willy I’s words. The ghost of the boyfriend–the name is James, I think–shows up and looks tenderly down on Willy II. Willy I asks him if he’s ever gotten over it. No, Willy II says. You learn to live with the loss; that’s all. It doesn’t go away.

At the very end of the film, Michel’s spirit sidles up to Willy I on the street and chats with him. We see a ghostly car pull up, and Michel says, “Well, I have to go.” Words cannot transmit very well what happens here, but it’s as if in watching Michel’s ghost drive off in the car, we see Willy I’s grief drive down into his soul.

I’ve never seen a film treat loss and social dearth with such care and loveliness. The film is billed as a comedy (can you believe it?) but to me, its backbone is formed by these ghosts. We are haunted by losses we each carry in agonizing solitude, no matter how many times we tell the story; and yet, telling the story saves us by its salving connection. Especially for those society has already, with a thousand small snips, pushed to the margins, friendship becomes the material nourishment for learning to live with senseless loss.