*************************

“However, we will have a zero tolerance policy on comments whose goal is to sow dissention, engages in personal attacks and/or attempts to demonize others because of their beliefs and/or opinions. Only positive criticisms, analysis and comments that educate, enlighten and edify will be allowed.”

Hi, I haven’t been here in a while. And most likely it’s clear to you that I don’t comment or participate in discussions.

No matter. I was visiting this morning and decided that I’d actually read (re-read) your mission statement. It makes a lot of sense. I appreciated it and will most likely be posting it to my blog in the very near future with a link back to all of you here.

The only part I’d have to say I have issue with is the part I have in quotations up above.

It’s ambiguous.
Here’s what I mean…
For some people anyone asking questions that makes people uncomfortable, that casts the group in a bad light is sowing dissent.

For some people asking someone to be accountable for their actions and to take responsibility for inflicting harm or being oppressive is a personal attack.

For some people attempting to start conversations about oppression inside our ranks (not from without) is demonizing those who hold privilege and wield it without shame or consciousness because of their beliefs as related to things like their constructed positions in class, academic, economic, sexuality, gender, relationship/family configuration, linguistic, citizenship, global hierarchies which, to my mind, are big blind areas of oppression inside our communities.

For some people tackling an issue head on, naming it, breaking silence around it and requesting that it be addressed rather than be avoided is being negative.

What I’m getting at here is that without an analysis of power and domination inside our forced collective, where it is mutually and collectively understood that there are “haves” and “have nots”, people with privilege and those who are subjugated by those with privilege, the words you’ve written up above might be mistakenly construed as extremely liberal and not at all grounded in the project of conscientizing and liberating us from the imposed systems of power and dominance that hold us in place and push us down.

I’d propose a change in language that acknowledges the differences between us and the request that those places where our experiences diverge due to unearned privilege or oppression not be used against us to silence us as we attempt to throw off shackles not just on the outside but also inside our own backyard, as well.

Happy new year. Be well middle passage sibs.
darkdaughta

Clarence

K.