A lot of what I’m seeing emerge on Twitter is dispiriting and depressing. People are keen to pick and choose black feminist quotes but perhaps not as willing to internalise some of their principles

Let’s take Audre Lorde. Ive lost track of the times I’ve seen “if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive” shared, but I think this moment might be opportune to revisit the wider context of that essay

Lorde is speaking during the 1980s about the lessons that need to be learned from the 1960s but then parallels with today are profound

“we must move against not only those forces which dehumanize us from the outside, but also against those oppressive values which we have been forced to take into ourselves..

We were poised for attack, not always in the most effective places. When we disagreed with one another about the solution to a particular problem, we were often far more vicious to each other than to the originators of our common problem.

Historically, difference has been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness

In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline tor living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity – Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity

In the 60s, white america – racist liberal alike – was more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the nonviolent, and Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power movement was prone.

We know in the 1980s, from documents gained through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI and CIA used our intolerance of difference to foment confusion and tragedy in segment after segment of Black communities of the 60s.

too often our forums for debate became stages for playing who’s-Blacker-than-who Or who’s-poorer-than-who games, ones in which there can be no winners.

As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be.

And a other oft pulled quote from the same essay “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people?

Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives:  who labors to make the read we waste, or the energy it takes to make nuclear poisons which will not biodegrade for one thousand years; or who goes blind assembling the microtransistors in our inexpensive calculators?

Can anyone of us here still afford to believe that efforts to reclaim the future can be private or individual?

Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of anyone particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class?

Revolution is not a one-time event. It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses; for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect.

We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.

Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event, or something that happens around us rather than inside of us. Not to believe that freedom can belong to anyone group of us without the others also being free

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other.  I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same.

What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other & to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness

And we must fight that inserted piece of self-destruction that lives and flourishes like a poison inside of us, unexamined until it makes us turn upon ourselves in each other.

But we can put our finger down upon that loathing buried deep within each one of us and see who it encourages us to despise, and we can lessen its potency by the knowledge of our real connectedness, arcing across our differences.

Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies’ work by destroying each other.

Over and over again in the 60s I was asked to justify my existence and my work, because I was a woman, because I was a Lesbian, because I was not a separatist, because some piece of me was not acceptable. Not because of my work but because of my identity”

These are some excerpts, read the whole beautiful liberatory essay here (1982) AUDRE LORDE, “LEARNING FROM THE 60S” https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1982-audre-lorde-learning-60s/ #AudreLorde