No More Black Billionaires or Trips to Hawaii

"we deserve indulgence" never meant "we deserve to be oppressors"

I recognize that the nature of the internet means that this discussion isn’t happening in a closed space. In an ideal world it would be. Despite my firm stance on this, I think that this is a conversation that needs to be had within Black communities . These conversations should account for the ways that: growing up in poverty, the fear of scarcity built into capitalist systems, the very real fear of violence we face on a daily basis, and literally being told day in and out that we can never break free of this system, informs the way that Black folks hoard wealth and ignore very real criticism of harmful capitalist practices. And everything I say is kept with these considerations in mind. That being said:

Nothing you say to me will convince me that Black people have some innate right to become oppressors under the current system of white supremacy or capitalism. No amount of historical trauma, or global anti blackness excuses complicity in a system that will continue to harm us writ large.

And I am here to hold space for the frustration and sadness of Black folks globally as we continue to work through the generational trauma that we hold, and the new ways we are being traumatized. Because it's a lot, and I do believe that Black joy will be central to any lasting revolution.

I have been thinking and writing, and rewriting a much longer piece that talks about the revolutionary necessity of pursuing pleasure and joy outside of the paradigm of white supremacy and capitalism. It's not quite complete and I try not to share incomplete ideas - BUT I think that there is a foundational concept that I want to share.

Black joy, Black indulgence, Black excellence that looks and acts like white supremacy and capitalist oppression is white supremacy and capitalist oppression.

Just because we say it’s revolutionary to prioritize our joy, it doesn’t mean we can’t fall into the trap of upholding the systems we wish to subvert. "We deserve joy" and "we deserve indulgence" is sounding more and more like "it's our turn to hurt the most marginalized people." And it's upsetting because I don't think that was ever the intention of those really important and impactful statements. They were supposed to liberate Black people from our attachment to overwork and no reward. They were meant to combat the guilt we feel for not putting in 110 percent into spaces that see us as disposable. They were supposed to encourage us to prioritize joy.

I didn’t think we would find joy in oppression.

And of course, the ways that we engage with these conversations require constant reflection of our own positionality. Discernment is key. Not every Black person has the same access to wealth, means of generating wealth, networks, security etc. And it’s really harmful to pretend that we do. I think that it’s also really important to recognize that class and mobility within class is not fixed for everyone and will can change throughout a person’s life. When we as individuals whose class positionality has changed, refuse to acknowledge those changes, we run the risk of speaking for people we can’t represent or justifying our own actions that maybe were once ethical but aren’t any longer.

I do not want this critique a very dangerous practice to get muddled in conversations about who did or didn’t buy something from Amazon. I think we can all agree that buying from Amazon is not something we should do, and that often buying from Amazon is the only thing that can accommodate some limited budgets - again, discernment. We often conflate the choice of Amazon versus Walmart to the choice between Hawaii and literally anywhere else in the world (including staying home, that’s always an option). The unfortunate choices we make as unconsensual parts of an unethical global supply chain is vastly different to the choices we make that actively uphold the worst parts of that chain. In one instance we are weighing our own survival against that of someone else (not great, I agree). And in one instance we are actively upholding and contributing to the suffering of another person for our “joy.”

I also find that this narrative of prioritizing joy often comes with a deeply imperialist and western centric lens wherein Black people in the Global North (particularly US, Canada, UK) ignore the very real advantages they have over many of their global kin through their citizenship. We can acknowledge the ways that these states are violent and harmful towards us whilst also recognizing that our citizenship in these places makes it so that our needs and safety are prioritized above other Black and brown people globally. We should also be able to be critical of the ways in which the context that we were raised or socialized in also informs the way we think about our own experiences and lives as central.

And so, I think that it says less about us as a people and more about the world we live in, that we cannot conceive of joy outside of consumption. That we cannot think of joy that does not come at the expense of someone else or joy that is not another's suffering. I want us to be more revolutionary in the way we imagine pleasure, joy, and excellence. I want us to imagine our joy as being linked to the joy of our community, or at the very least not responsible for its suffering. But just because it’s not our fault that this is the way we operate, it doesn’t mean it isn’t our responsibility to imagine something better.

Because you can never deserve to make another person suffer. And do you really want to continue to live in a world where anyone deserves that, knowing the ways that that logic has brought us to this place?
It's giving white supremacy loves.