Imagine a braid. One big, long, huge braid of three locks of hair or more. One lock decides it doesn’t want to be restricted and held down by the structure and order of the braid anymore. It would rather be loosed, left to bend and sway at will, tastefully unkempt, unruly, but beautiful nonetheless. I suppose that if it wanted to wriggle free on its own, it could do so, but imagine the struggle, the exhaustion and frustration, and the time it would take. Hair is fragile; I reckon the ends of most of them would split along the way, and that split would eventually grow and grow until pieces started breaking off. At the end of the years it would take that strand to wriggle and free itself of the bind, what with being intertwined with the other strands, woven tight, there would be little left.
Braiding is a tradition among black folk.
We do so much braiding, so much weaving. And so much wriggling. We’ve been wriggling since we’ve been here, twisting and turning, bending our backs even after they’ve been broken, squeezing and stretching and slinking through and flattening out and contorting, trying to get out of our boxes and chains in one way or another. We just want the chance and the space to be beautifully unkempt. That’s what any strand of hair in a braid wants. No one is born with braided hair. As beautiful as they are they are forced into our tresses by others, and later by ourselves once we learn the trade.
Our scalps breathe a sigh of relief when we let our braids out. Our fingers scurry and scamper from this lock to that one, freeing and liberating piece after piece after piece and we know from experience that one strand can’t be free without the freeing of another. The liberation of one depends on the liberation of the others.
The liberation of one depends on the liberation of others.
So many black people get angry when others compare the gay rights movement to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and 70s. They take it as an insult, arguing that they’re two different things completely, which is absurd. There were once laws telling black folks who they could and could not marry, and unless we’ve been living under rocks or in caves lately, we’re well aware of the effort to ban gay marriage today. For years, black people in the public eye (television, movies, cartoons, etc) took (and still take) the form of stereotypical, offensive caricatures, rivaled today by images like those found in “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Blacks and gays are frequent victims of hate crimes and workplace discrimination. The biggest difference I can see between gay and African America is that characteristically, blacks experience more incidences of violent crime and are the more impoverished and unhealthier of the two, which then draws issues of class and elitism. Still, the parallels are too uncanny to ignore. It makes sense that someone oppressed in this country could and would empathize with the plight of other oppressed people. But we get upset. We get angry and make ignorant, homophobic comments. We imitate the mannerisms of the oppressors and color ourselves no better than them. We simply help divide ourselves, making ourselves easier for the one group who is ultimately keeping us all down to conquer. It sometimes seems as if we are all demanding priority in the order of dominations, competing to be the most oppressed in America. We are, as hip hop artist Talib Kweli once said, “like slaves on a ship, talkin’ about who got the flyest chain.”**
You don’t have to be gay to understand the importance of gay liberation. You don’t have to be Asian or Latino or Middle Eastern or Native American or Black to understand the importance of “racial” liberation. You don’t have to be a woman to understand the importance of sexual liberation. You don’t have to be working class to understand the importance of economic class liberation.
All you have to do is recognized the many ways that you are privileged over others in this country—and there is always a way, be it by your race, your class, gender, sexuality, age, etc—because once you allow yourself to see that privilege, you can then see and understand your oppression. And maybe once you see your own oppression, you can see that ultimately we are all tenants of the same braid, all aching and itching and wriggling to be beautifully unkempt.
Tomorrow, Friday, April 9th, we celebrate Liberation Day to commemorate the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to the Union 139 years ago. More than that, we celebrate the attained and pending liberation of all people, gay, straight, black, white, brown, male, female, upper and working class, “eastern” and “western.” The braid will unravel much quicker if we all work proactively towards our universal roots.
That’s liberation, and baby, I want it. –Outkast
*Talib Kweli, “I Try” from the album Beautiful Struggle, Rawkus Records, 2004.
**Talib Kweli, "Africa Dream" from the album Reflection Eternal, Rawkus Records, 2004.
