armenian genocide

dear aza,

you are sleeping right now.  wrapped in a blanket next to your papa.  i hope you are having sweet dreams. 

tonight i am listening to ward churchill.  right now he is talking about the armenian genocide.  the fact that the official israeli policy is to not refer to the slaughter of the armenians in 1910’s as genocide.  there are 4 quarters to the old city of jerusalem.  christian, muslim, jewish, and armenian.  and there is a small poster announcing the armenian genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century.  i had never heard of the armenian genocide until i read that poster. 

and the holocaust museum in washington, dc was not allowed to mention the armenian ‘tragedy’ as genocide.

the lecture i am listening to is called: holocaust denial as official academic orthodoxy.

what is the significance of this to you?  a genocide that happened 100 years ago?

i want to tell you that when i was in israel talking to israeli soldiers about their extermination of the palestinian people, they would point clearly to what the ‘americans’ did to their native populations.  and i want to tell you that nazi leaders studied the u.s. techniques of extermination on the native peoples of the americas to learn how to deal with their ‘jewish problem’. 

and so the denial of genocide is cyclical and chain linked.  and i want you to break that chain. 

i have tried to break that chain.  there is a poem that i read when i was a teenager called: first they came

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

i am reading the book this month about war, denial and world war 2 called: a chorus of stones.  at one point she asks if we, if i, if the reader would have fought against the jewish holocaust.  if we had lived in that time, would we have asked the questions, and been willing to face the answers that 6 million jews and another 6 million people: gypsies, intellectuals, slavs, homosexuals, and more were being killed…what would we have done.  last night, i had a realization.  i would have fought.  i would have put my body, this body, that hypothetical body 80 years ago on the line to stop this killing.  i would have asked the questions, and been willing to face the answers. 

this may sound like hubris.  everyone thinks nowadays that they would not have supported a horrible regime.  but honestly i think that i am different from them in this fundamental question.  i feel that my life choices shows this difference.  i have tried to break the chain of denial.  and yes the genocides continue.  people and their knowledges and their spirits disappear from this earth, never to be replaced.  but i fight these genocides.  i cannot be in all places in all times. 

but i can be with you.  i can choose not to shield you from the pain of this world.  i do not want you to learn to deny the world that you live in.  and when (if) they come for me, i hope that you speak out.  and when (if) they come for you, i hope that you have co-created a community that will speak out for you. 

sleep well.  no nightmares. 

you are the survivor of the genocide of black peoples.  and the only safety that is available to you is the love of your people and your community.  yes, people and community are complicated identities.  but they are real. and they are worth holding onto in all of their complications. 

sleep well, mija. 

and i will tell you about the armenians in the morning.

there’s something missing from mommy lit

great quotes from an article in bitch called:  theres something missing from mommy lit

That black mothers were not among the combatants on the fake battlefield of the mommy wars is not coincidental. This simply wasn’t our fight. In her book Having It All: Black Women and Success, Veronica Chambers notes, “Guilt just isn’t a currency in our lives the way it is in the lives of white women.” Further, as economist Julianne Malveaux observed in USA Today, “Some African-American women want to yawn at the angst about shouldering multiple burdens and juggling multiple roles. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt so long ago that I recycled it.” Since the 1940s, black women have outnumbered white women in the labor force. According to some reports, the black middle class owes its existence to black women’s presence in the workplace.

and:

I asked one Mocha Mom I know, Jennifer, what she thought about mommy memoirs and the mommy wars. She responded, “Historically, we’ve had to take care of our kids and their kids,” referring to black women’s roles during slavery and as domestic workers in white households after slavery and throughout the ’50s and ’60s. “Now we only have to take care of our kids, and we just don’t have the same level of angst as white women do. Definitely not enough to write a whole book about it.”

and:

The encounter led Parker to write I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of Marriage, Motherhood, and Work, a book that combines memoir with the stuff good U.S. history texts should be made of. In it, Parker presents her personal experiences as a mother, wife, and professional woman, as well as the larger historical legacy of black women and work. Of the mommy wars, she writes: “Understand, it’s not that I think that black women have all the answers — only that we have struggled with the questions longer and that sometimes our tool sets are more expansive. I am clear that in all cultures there are other committed women who deeply believe they must stand on one or another side of a work-family divide and agitate in order to create a better world for their children. And really, I can dig it. I’m actually quite grateful that I can skim some of their best parts off the top. But these women must never, ever try to give me any of their excess baggage.”