Decolonizing the Closet: Cultural Bombs
Prompt No. 73: Audre Lorde, Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o
Warning: Mention of race-based violence.
Apparently, the anger was normal. According to Audre Lorde, “Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along the wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.” Mine were making their way to the surface. After a decades-long hiatus, resuming my studies in decolonization under overt fascism had thrown me into a constant state of irascibility. When I last thought about Fanon, Gayle, Ani, and others, progress felt in reach — like white folks might finally grab hold of it — but no. Bracing for the president’s white supremacist policies to hit last year awakened the angers; by summer, they began to stir. Every time the state killed a citizen, every time a Black person swung lifeless from a tree, every time another friend lost their job and struggled to find work, the anger climbed. Though the savagery took place in plain sight, no one seemed to react, least of all white Americans. I tried to camouflage my contempt in theory, but even that drew ire. Generations of writers, artist, and thinkers warned that this would happen. Capitalist consumption would eventually numb us to the barbaric nature of our existence and that moment had arrived. I fantasized spitting out a post with just eight words — THIS WAS AVOIDABLE AND IT’S WHITE FOLKS’ FAULT! — but I always wimped out and found a more “academic” way of saying it. As society continued breaking apart, it took longer and longer to find it. The anger got in the way of things, things I loved, so I dug it all the way up and discovered its root with a chime.
One morning, my three silver bracelets tinkled as they tumbled down my wrist. I recognized the light ring from childhood, having heard it at the kitchen counter, the salon, even piercing through the din of noise at the neighborhood market. At some point, though, I noticed I never heard it at school, so I made sure to never introduce it. Diversity was merely tolerated there and my small Black body brought enough of that to the largely colorless space. Broadcasting the resemblance my hair bore to “pubes” or how much darker my skin was to their deepest summer tan seemed to disturb them as much as it embarrassed me. To shut them up, to feel less Other, I noticed and narrowed what dissimilarities I could. Still, uncultured white girls grow up to be uncultured white women. By adulthood, I was so attuned to their discomfort that I caught whiffs of it before they opened their mouths, long before that exhausting stammer could kick in. I flicked my wrist (as invocation this time) and wondered how many of these tiny modulations I made over the years. I concluded even two was too many. I have always loved being Black; always understood it as an honor and privilege to come from such an incredible lineage. To realize some of my tastes were born of survival, a need to forestall any question of my belonging, let alone my mere existence, stunned me. Knowing these negotiations between assimilation and cultural pride began before I was eight broke me. If I thought fashion and style guaranteed some reprieve, I now understood they would never deliver, at least not for me. Had I not already cleared out my closet months earlier, I would have bitterly ripped through it.
“There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
- Audre Lorde
Kenyan author and academic Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o referred to this experience as a “cultural bomb” — the annihilation of “a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves.” As a colonial project, the United States developed cultural bombs for domestic use; ways of dominating, ignoring, and absorbing any dissimilarity to white identity, which notably lacks culture. Instead, white identity exists as a status, a set of social, political, racial, and economic positions that sustain the supremacy of affluent white men that colonialism asserts. That said, “colonialism is not a thinking machine,” as Franz Fanon explained. “It is violence in its natural state.” Therefore, in order for the project to continue unabated, white identity must have some “inherent” value, one worth enacting senseless, everyday violence to defend. That value is beauty.
Now, I’ve discussed beauty before. Beauty is comprised of principles centered on the pleasure and gratification of influential white men. Yet, only with further [decolonized] study, did I begin to grasp just how important it was that beauty was defined. When stripped of its instinctive qualities and positioned as a universal truth, beauty is no longer understood as a sacred, singular experience subject to independent interpretation. It becomes objective, or verifiable through standardization. This standardization serves two functions: (1) to render beauty inaccessible to the masses; and (2) to gain control over the way they see and experience the world. In other words, it becomes a specialized knowledge, attained through exclusive access and intellectual rigor, that invalidates all other depictions. Colloquially, we refer to this as taste. A power dynamic forms whereby the masses become uncertain and distrustful of their own senses, and therefore, seek validation from the select few who possess the expertise to affirm or reject their aesthetic suppositions — academics, artists, curators, and philanthropists. Of course, this dynamic is only strengthened and accelerated under capitalism. Beauty becomes the basis for all consumption. No longer intellectualized, it exists as an aspirational image for anyone with middle or upper class ambitions to reproduce. Capitalists take advantage, consistently manufacturing ways to appear lighter, taller, thinner, richer. Primed to embrace distinction (strategies to assign oneself greater value) over the course of generations, modern society quickly tolerates any inequality that betters their individual position.
These days I find little utility in white Western thought and realizing its obsolescence brought peace and renewed energy. Because what does a colorless criterion have to offer a Black woman other than stifled creativity and suppressed spirit? What legitimacy does that worldview hold without a sight line to other as equals? No wonder we struggle to find contentment when this is the material with which we construct our sense of self. Every trend, drop, release, and arrival moves us farther from ourselves and one another. Forsaking the richness of culture and community to be seen as American? Sorry, but that’s some shoddy shit I’m no longer buying.
Editorial Note: This is the first installment in the series, “Decolonizing the Closet”
The second will discuss Audre Lorde’s “institutionalized rejection of difference” and making the shift to subjectivity.