Once, in a conversation (really an argument) my sister and I were going back and forth about things either being black or white. She was insistent in saying that the world can be either one way or the other. My sister does not stand alone in this thinking and/or thought but many, if not most, people do think this way. This is how many of us make sense of the world, and ourselves. More importantly, this is how many of us were taught to make sense of the world and ourselves. We label, categorize, create boxes. I understand the feeling of need for labels, categories, and boxes and that the aforementioned means of dichotomy in and of themselves are not negative. However, when paired with our white supremacist capitalist social ideologies, the label, category and box become mechanisms to demean and dehumanize. They can also stunt growth and prosperity. Hence, the call for learning and unlearning.

In a poem I wrote entitled Not quite privilege but a blessing there is a line which says “We split between two worlds. One with a purple sky and vibes, the other has grey suits and Ph.Ds, we stick up our middle fingers and do back flips on the balance beam.” There are those that believe a person can only be right or wrong, gay or straight, democrat or republican. The question I pose to those people is, what about us that exist in the grey? I want to broaden the poem’s scope by acknowledging, here, more than just those two worlds. The grey is living in multiple worlds. Worlds where any semblance of a binary is pushed back against and rendered not for us. Our location is this multi-layered dynamic kaleidoscope that acknowledges all the worlds that we exist in and all the worlds we hold in our bodies. The multiple femininities, masculinities, politics, religions, classes, etc. which we balance with grace and fortitude. Even now I am questioning my use of “grey” but we’re going to roll with it. In the above line from my poem I am acknowledging and combating two of the paths, as a college graduate and artist, that are presented to me. I find them both limiting. I am not interested in obtaining my Ph.D then entering a corporate or academic space which cannot handle, uplift, and celebrate the color that streams behind me. However, I also do not want a life that removes me from the table. So as much as I would love to create and dance with like-minded folks somewhere in a place, in which, we pray to ourselves at our own table, I know that this form of resistance is needed here for me and my people to break all these damn chains. Although, I see the grey space as inherent to our existence I also see it as a location of celebration, which is integral to our happiness, because we live in an international prison hell-bent on erasing us.

“What are they trying to erase?” you may ask. My reply, the intersection. Intersectionality is a critical theory that studies race, class, gender, sexual orientation, body size, etc. but does not separate them. Intersectionality is doing a back flip on the balance beam, is the academic term for grey space. In a world that wants you to be one thing at a time or wants you to pick a side, intersectionality says “No I am all of these things, all of the time.” For example, in the fights against racism and sexism Black women are often called to choose. They are told, that doing the work of freeing themselves as women counteracts the work Black people are doing to free themselves as a race. This attack undermines the stakes they have in both fights. Which also makes me question who are we working to get free, in our fight against racism? Nevertheless, that is intersectionality. That is grey space. The threat of it is really is just the effort that people have to put forth to acknowledge each person as a whole being and not just the parts which fit their needs, desires, and pre-conceived notions.

I think it is important to unlearn stringent binary ways of thinking because it makes us complicit, in a lot of ways, with white supremacist capitalist patriarchal heteronormative systems, which if you believe in that, fine, I guess, but the violence that comes with it needs to be addressed and stopped. And not just the physical violence but the emotional and psychological violences as well, which tell us that our bodies, ideas, and ways of living are less than. The professional violences which cast a glass ceiling above us.  All of this is to say, how do we have the purple sky and the Ph.D? I understand for freedom, liberation, equity we have to give things up but how do we do this work without it always being our lives and livelihoods? Is that possible? Is that a dream? In this series of essays I want to unearth that answer. So engage with me and let’s figure some shit out.

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