A few weeks ago, I received some good news in regards to publishing and my writing. I was pretty happy, but that lasted for a few minutes, maybe. After those fleeting minutes of happiness had passed, I felt kind of dread in my stomach. Like because something good had happened, inevitably it would be followed up by something bad. I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
As I write this, I guess the other shoe hasn't dropped yet, but this is the way I have felt for a long time now. Ever since I got off the phone with the editor of my book in January 2019, knowing she loved The Henna Wars and was about to send us an offer. I still sometimes feel like someone is going to take it all away even though obviously very tangible things have happened between January 2019 and now.
So much of this irrational fear comes from being a woman of colour, and being a woman of colour in this industry specifically. It feels like even when I'm here, I'm not here. Like there is so little value ascribed to me, I might as well not be here at all.
A few weeks ago, there was...an incident.
As a writer on the Twittersphere, I have been added to many different groupchats. I have had to leave almost all of them because of racism. The only ones I haven't left are the ones which exclusively consist of women of colour.
A few weeks ago, in a Twitter groupchat consisting of writers, a quote was posted that contained exclusionary language. In my interpretation, it ascribed power and privilege to "men," which essentially does not take into account the fact that men from different spheres of life do not experience power and privilege in the same way. That, in many situations, cishet white women have power over men.
In a group that was overwhelming full of white women, my friend and I (both queer women of colour), suggested that perhaps there was more nuance needed in a quote such as that. We were, unsurprisingly, met with defensiveness from our white peers. Someone suggested that the person who had shared the quote (and - it turned out - the quote belonged to) knew what she was talking about and had an important message to share. As if we did not know what we were talking about and were not addressing anything of importance.
Then, like clockwork, we were accused of "pulling [someone] apart." Don't get me wrong, from the get-go, we were treated as aggressors, it was just that someone had now spoken it.
Someone apologised and mentioned how this place should be a "safe space." But I always wonder about what that means. How can there be a safe space where there are huge power imbalances, especially through numbers? Who is being silenced in those safe spaces? In that safe space, it was the women of colour.
We swiftly exited the chat. It was nothing that I hadn't experienced before, but I guess the discomfort of it came because everyone in that space was my colleague, and I would be expected to spend all of my career smiling pretty and pretending that they did not view me as an aggressor for simply existing.
It was after I exited that "apologies" came pouring in. I will paraphrase here, but they suggested that they had entered into the conversation without any awareness of what it was really about. They wished they had been a little more thoughtful. They wished they had read what was being said before saying anything. They wished they had worded things better.
Of course, when you come into a conversation with no knowledge and still think it's okay to attack the only women of colour and accuse them of aggression based off of nothing, that's a marker of your racism more than anything else. The only thing "apologies" proved to me was their attempts at washing their hands clean, their fear of being accused of racism, their need to say, "no, I'm a good person, I promise." Their apologies had nothing to do with me.
Then, there was the explanation that some of them were trying to "keep the peace." To quote Martin Luther King Jr: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."
The reason why I'm sharing this story is because this is what being a woman of colour in this industry is like. This is not the first time an incident like this has happened to me, and it certainly won't be the last. People who call themselves "allies," and "feminists," loud and proud but continually perpetuate violence against women of colour.
So, I suppose, is it any wonder that as a woman of colour, I am constantly waiting for the other shoe drop? Hasn't it already dropped? Is it not that feeling of never belonging? Is it not the racism at the root of it all, that will show up in your day-to-day life? Is it not the people who will get accolades for their "diverse" novels and smile proudly for being a fantastic ally but be bystanders as violence is enacted on you? Or worse, the violence they enact on you if you allow yourself to befriend them?
Waiting For The Other Shoe To Drop...
