I recently spent a whole weekend binge-watching the Netflix series “Pose”, and while many things stood out to me during the course of watching the show, there was a particular statement made by one of the characters that proved to be very thought provoking for me. I vividly remember the context within which the statement was said and I will do my best to summarise what I can recall. Blanca, a trans black women, wanted to get a drink at a gay bar. She sat down at the bar but was subsequently removed from the bar on the premise that she was a trans-woman and therefore at a lower social standing than the gay men within the bar. Blanca, upon telling a friend about what took place at the bar was met with the reply, “Everyone needs someone to feel superior to.” This powerful statement highlighted that irrespective of both parties being part of the LGBTQIA+ community in the 80’s, facing the same type of discrimination and fighting to change the same negative societal perception, there was a hierarchy that existed which rendered certain members of the community superior or inferior to each other.
This hierarchical order of the LGBTQIA+ community as portrayed in “Pose”, was immediately familiar as it resembled the order of things within the black community. Although there is a shared history of suffering and oppression, there are those who are deemed better due to possessing a fairer skin tone and those who are deemed less due to a darker complexion. There are those who see themselves as better for having grown up and lived in the west despite their African heritage. There are Africans who see themselves as better than African-Americans and there are African-Americans who see themselves as better than Africans. The list goes on. We have a hierarchy that exists within a larger system of domination that has adopted the basic mechanisms of racism and used them to create internal systems that we use to dominate each other. I have a friend who often compares society to sheep that no longer require a shepherd because they have learnt how to effectively herd themselves and keep each other in line. I cannot think of an analogy more fitting to describe the internalisation of discriminatory rhetoric and ideology which we then use to police ourselves and each other within our own minority communities.
The scary reality of the above is that fighting the larger systems of oppression whether it be that of patriarchy, racism, heteronormativity is not enough. The very things we are fighting have seeped through the cracks of our communities and made themselves at home in the places we used to seek refuge. The battle is more than just us versus the unequal nature of our society, but it’s us versus us, and us versus our very nature as human beings that inherently wants to feel superior to our brother. A consequence of self-hatred no doubt, for when you hate your brother you hate yourself, for you see in yourself what you see in your brother. To combat this, I see no other way than to protect our minds with the same vigilance with which we would protect our bodies during battle. There are no better words that highlight the dangers of a brainwashed mind than those spoken by Steve Biko, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”. Often forgotten in our quest to change society is guarding our minds with attentiveness. Often forgotten is the task of asking ourselves whether the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the order of our society are a result of our own meticulous thinking or that of years of socialisation .
Though the words of legendary rapper Ice Cube “You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself” are often used, depending on the context they are words that can hold a lot more meaning beyond their initial and literal interpretation. The notion of “checking one’s self” in this context in particular can be seen as a process of self-examination and reflection as a means by which to determine whether the views you hold are not prejudiced against one’s self. A means by which to weed out the unfavourable views held by our collective society that we have harboured as our own. As someone who perceived herself as “woke”, I came to discover certain biases and prejudices I held against the very things that were at the core of who I was as an individual. These were things that were not only hindering my progress as an individual but were hindering the progress of the communities I found myself in as they fed into larger and much more negative beliefs that were collectively held. This led me to believe that sometimes the best thing you can do in fighting inequality is to hold onto a clear and unwavering awareness of self. After all as the African proverb goes “if there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm”
