This week, Our Body Politic honors politics and pride, featuring a past interview between Farai and the late intersectional activist, lawyer, educator and author Urvashi Vaid who led movements for a range of progressive issues, including AIDS advocacy, LGBT rights and prison reform. The pair discuss Vaid’s legacy as a leading figure in social change and what it truly takes to change the lived experience of everyone— to achieve lived equality. Then in our series, “Our Body Politics Presents…” we feature the podcast Truth Be Told with host Tonya Mosley who interviews minister and writer Danté Stewart about how to cultivate “little experiments of liberation” while experiencing and navigating repetitive acts of American violence.
Farai Chideya:
Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. We're here for you, with you and because of you. Thank you. This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya, activist, author, academic lawyer, funder, leader. Urvashi Vaid was all of these and she was also my friend. She died last month of cancer, leaving a legacy of intersectional activism and a reputation for moving mountains. During this era where attacks on LGBTQ Americans have become a key battle front and political culture wars, her work is more relevant than ever.
Farai Chideya:
As just one example of the current climate, just last Saturday, police in Idaho arrested 31 white supremacists who'd planned to attack an LGBTQ pride event later that day. Vaid, an immigrant from India, always made the connections between LGBTQ issues, racial justice and economic inequality. Vaid authored the influential 1995 book, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation, worked as a lawyer for the National Prison Project, led the organization now known as the National LGBTQ Task Force and cofounded the Donors of Color Network among many more distinctions. I asked her friend and collaborator, Juan Battle, a presidential professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York what made Urvashi a force?
Juan Battle:
She made her biggest impact on the world through creating and liberating. She created organizations and institutions that directly and indirectly liberated people to organize, to be free, to access power.
Farai Chideya:
Professor Battle also pointed to the ways she was able to connect the challenges to bodily autonomy and freedom facing many populations.
Juan Battle:
She intrinsically knew that you've got to build allies and you've got to build coalitions. And she was intersectional before we had the vocabulary as freely as we do now. Within her, she knew that there were similarities and how the state treated LGBT folks and how the state treated people of color. And so there was this natural alliance that could be built between these two entities.
Farai Chideya:
Vaid is survived by loved ones including her partner, the comedian, Kate Clinton. As a couple Urvashi and Kate embodied the title of Tony award-winning playwright and artist, Alison Bechdel's comic, Dykes To Watch Out For. And fittingly, Vaid will be commemorated at the Dyke March on June 25th as part of New York's Pride Month celebrations. Now your chance to listen to my 2014 conversation with pioneer, Urvashi Vaid. Rest in power, Urvashi. How are you, Urvashi?
Urvashi Vaid:
I'm very well. It's good to see you.
Farai Chideya:
It's great to see you too. So in this report that you did, you sent me, I was like, "What are you up to?" and you said, "Well, I really worked on this report called A Roadmap For Change," and it's about recommendations for federal policy for the criminalization of LGBT people and people living with HIV and how to end that and I had never really thought about it in the way that the report outlined. So just walk me through some of the things you cover.
Urvashi Vaid:
Sure. The report comes out of the work of dozens of primarily locally based LGBT and criminal justice organizations that have been working on issues of policing and prison conditions and jail conditions of juvenile justice and HIV criminalization. And what you need to understand is that the LGBT community was criminalized. There was criminalization in the form of sodomy laws which actively criminalized conduct. There were laws that prohibited people from wearing the clothes of the opposite gender. So there's a history there that actually manifests itself in certain ways today, but there's also ways in which LGBT people, because of discrimination and stigmatization, find themselves thrust into the criminal justice systems.
Urvashi Vaid:
So this report was an attempt to put a set of issues on the national LGBT agenda that have not been there. It makes a very detailed set of policy recommendations to the federal government primarily to federal agencies, actions that federal agencies can take by executive action in several different areas in the arenas of law enforcement, of prison conditions, of immigration detention centers and my favorite part of the report is where we talk about the underlying drivers to criminalization. We're living in a society in which there's an overreliance on the criminal law. We turn to criminal law to control behavior that criminal law is not well suited for.
Urvashi Vaid:
So for example, putting people who are homeless on the streets because of a mental illness or because they've lost their job and don't have anywhere to go or because they can't pay their mortgage and they get swept up under vagrancy laws and incarcerated, that's not a solution to anybody's problem. The vast majority of people who are in prisons and jails are there for drug offenses. Is criminalization the best way to handle somebody's drug problem? No and it's expensive too. And there are a number of ways in which the lives of ordinary people who are just going about their business are affected by overpolicing, overincarceration and overreliance on criminal laws.
Urvashi Vaid:
So the HIV statutes, but 36 states have laws that basically they criminalize people who are HIV positive because they say that if you don't disclose your HIV status and you spit on somebody or you have sex with somebody, you could be facing a felony charge, if that person brings a charge against you. Now, HIV is not transmitted by spit. It is not transmitted by shaking hands, by sitting next to somebody, by sharing a cup, by eating off the same plate, by doing a million normal things. It's got very precise ways that it's transmitted and these laws are giving people a false sense of security.
Farai Chideya:
So this report we've been talking about as part of your working between many different organizations, you have written a number of different books, so how did you get to this point in your life? Give us just your path.
Urvashi Vaid:
Well, that's a big question.
Farai Chideya:
Yes, it is.
Urvashi Vaid:
How'd you get your start? I've always been interested in politics and political activism and social change. I think probably as an immigrant child, you experience two societies and you start to see the difference in the way people live and coming from India to America at the age of eight, as I did, in the mid '60s when my family immigrated here. I remember reading the paper even as a little kid and following the antiwar movement which was, of course, on TV as it was, as was the civil rights movement and women's liberation. So I was a child in the '60s, so I was just watching this stuff, but it was really made an impression on me and I identified. And then as a student activist in college in the '70s, I plunged into the antiapartheid movement, the women's movement and that really brought me to another level of awareness about global struggles, especially antiapartheid movement. The student divestment piece was what we were working on.
Farai Chideya:
So how did you decide that part of your identity and part of your mission in college would be to be an activist?
Urvashi Vaid:
I can't say that I decided that. It was what drew me. I guess it was a calling. If I was a religious person, I'd say I was called to that work because that's what it felt like. I just didn't feel compelled by anything as much as I did by activism. And I think I have a sense of fury at any authoritarian figure and injustice. It just makes me mad and I just don't think it's right. So I just want to plug in and do what I can to change that and that's been a part of me and it predates my discovery that I was a lesbian and my coming out. To me, I was either going to join a social movement or a rock band.
Farai Chideya:
Why not both? So is there anything you remember from childhood or teenagerhood where you had that feeling., "Oh, things just aren't right here," whether or not you acted against it?
Urvashi Vaid:
Oh, my mom tells a story of me as a very little girl and she was yelling at me and my sisters about something and she says I was probably like six or something. And I said to my mother, "Stop that." And this is all in Hindi, I'm translating something like, "Stop that mom. We're not plants. We're human beings. You can't talk to us like this."
Farai Chideya:
I love that and I'm sure she was like-
Urvashi Vaid:
And she loved it.
Farai Chideya:
I'm sure, she was like, "Oh, my goodness, what children am I raising?"
Urvashi Vaid:
Probably, I think it made her laughed and she's told that story with great joy ever since.
Farai Chideya:
That's fantastic.
Urvashi Vaid:
Where I grew up in the us was in a little college town in Upstate New York. My dad was an English professor at the State University of New York in Potsdam, New York. So even in that small college town, there was an antiwar movement and there were protests on the streets. And I remember that and watching it go by the house and being part of that sort of spirit. I didn't do activism directly until I got to the university setting and then I just got involved in a variety of different kinds of projects. And then after school, I moved to Boston because I wanted to join the women's movement. In the late '70s, Boston was known as a hotbed of feminist thinking and activism. The Combahee River Collective had come out with its statement on black feminism in 1977 and that was a really influential manifesto to a young radical in college.
Urvashi Vaid:
And it was just an exciting time. There were all these little underground publications and weekly newspapers. And in Boston, I got involved as a volunteer with Gay Community News which was a weekly community-based newspaper published by a collective. It was just a labor of love and it was an amazing set of people and thinkers and writers and artists. It was there that I think I developed a sense of sexual politics in the contestation of ideas, our fights in the collective about why something should be on the cover and why it shouldn't. There were discussions about the representation of sexuality and it was a wonderful time and I started also organizing in the community with gay and lesbian advocates and defenders which had just been started by two lawyers in town and a small group which single-A GLAD is it's called today is the group that won marriage equality in Massachusetts in 2004.
Urvashi Vaid:
And Boston was a really great place to go to law school. I went to law school while I lived there at Northeastern University which is a public interest law school. In other words, it is committed to its graduates going out and doing public interest law whether as public defenders or working in the government or even in the private sector. There's a consciousness that you have when you go to school there. At least, I still think it's there and it was a great place and it was where I got really compelled by prisoners' rights work. And then I ended up working at the National Prison Project of the ACLU.
Farai Chideya:
That's Urvashi Vaid, the late LGBTQ organizer, lawyer and author. Coming up next, we'll hear more of this conversation from 2014 with enduring relevance today. That's on Our Body Politic. Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you're just tuning in, we've been revisiting a conversation I recorded in 2014 with activist, Urvashi Vaid, who died of cancer last month. Vaid's death made headlines in mainstream outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker and also in LGBTQ publications like POZ Magazine and The Washington Blade. She was a format breaker who was never afraid of taking on new roles and responsibilities or of laughing or of fighting for her rights and the rights of the many. In an era where anti-LGBTQ political organizing and extremism are ramping up, Vaid's work shines a light on structures of power. Here's more of Urvashi Vaid from our 2014 interview for the podcast, One With Farai.
Farai Chideya:
Were you able to combine your women's activism and your LGBT activism with the prison activism?
Urvashi Vaid:
I was. And at the time the AIDS epidemic was emerging in the early '80s. And so I actually devised one of the first surveys of prison policies on HIV/AIDS and we wrote it up and published it in like 1984 and then tried to work on getting prisons and jails to actually have policies and provide medical care and all of that. In the early years of my activism, women's liberation and gay liberation were really merged in many ways in the LGBT movement and the movement that I came up. In other words, it wasn't like two different world views. Gay men that I worked with in the '70s saw the issue of abortion as an issue of sexual and reproductive freedom. They saw it as their issue. They saw it as the same issue that they were fighting for around sodomy repeal or around getting the state out of control over their sexual lives. And it is. It's conceptually and legally in many ways the same framework that of-
Farai Chideya:
The privacy framework that applies to the sodomy laws also applies to the question of how Roe v. Wade, abortion rights were structured in Roe v. Wade.
Urvashi Vaid:
But isn't it interesting how the two movements have split?
Farai Chideya:
Yeah.
Urvashi Vaid:
And today, you have LGBT organizations actually will endorse antichoice candidates or work with antichoice political leaders. It would have been inconceivable to do that in other moment in lesbian and gay history simply because everybody's understanding of what it meant to be a lesbian and gay activist was included women's rights.
Farai Chideya:
I think about a lot, the ways in which different groups align and divide. So during the civil rights era, you had Jews and African Americans with very aligned interest and now somewhat less, so some people would say radically less. And it sounds like what you're saying about women's rights and LGBT rights, among some people has also gone through this split. How do you begin to reengage people in the commonality of equality? Because my personal view is that equality is an absolute. If you respect someone's equality, you respect their equality in all aspects of who they are.
Urvashi Vaid:
Well, I think one of the shifts that I've been arguing for and I've been influenced in this by some wonderful work that's been done in the critical race movement among trans legal scholars like Dean Spade is to think about equality not just as formal legal equality but to think about it as changing the lived experience of everybody in our community. And if you focus on lived equality versus legal equality, it really opens the door for everybody to see, "Wow, the lived experience of somebody living on the upper east side is really different than the lived experience of somebody living in a small town in rural Texas. And if I'm talking about LGBT equality, I want it to be as conditioned that both of those people can experience. So you have to sort of start to think about, "Oh, gosh. So how do I impact the life of that person in rural Texas as well as the life of that person on the upper east side?"
Urvashi Vaid:
And I think the framework of lived equality, of thinking about how government and business and all these institutions that we live under that they distribute life chances and opportunities to people. Part of what we're trying to do is to recalibrate that distribution of life chances and opportunities. I think if you look at it that way, it draws you to the solution and the practical work that needs to be done, the practical policy changes that need to be made. I've spent a lot of time arguing theory and arguing for a moral unity, moral reason why we should all be united for solidarity has been a frame, coalition has been another frame.
Urvashi Vaid:
Those are important, but I think lived equality cuts through a lot of people's resistance because really it's very rare that you stand in front of somebody and talk about, "What's going on for a homeless teenager?" and they're going to say, "Well, I don't want to help because I'm successful and voussoir." You what I mean?
Farai Chideya:
Yeah.
Urvashi Vaid:
It cuts through a lot when you say, "Yeah, freedom should be available to everybody regardless of their economic position or their geographic location or their gender identity or their gender or their race." Then you get into, "Yeah, that's true. I believe that."
Farai Chideya:
On an even bigger umbrella level, we've been talking about struggles for equality among groups that in some ways have not experienced legal equality in America, but among people who seemingly should have always had legal equality in America. There's still people who don't have lived equality and how do you have that conversation or is that impossible these days?
Urvashi Vaid:
It's not impossible at all and I think the way to have that conversation is to talk about the inequality that's built into the economic system that is the source of their hardship. So white working-class people in this country are struggling. White middle-class people in this country are struggling as are people of color and they're struggling for the same reasons because we have an economic order which has made certain decisions to privatize government services, to cut back on taxes and to cut back on the taxes of the rich, to cut back on corporate taxes and cut back on regulations, a process that's been underway for about 40 years. And it's had consequences and the consequences are being felt by people who are not wealthy and the burden is being carried by those people.
Urvashi Vaid:
And when you talk like this in America, people, they shut down, but we have to find a way to talk about neoliberalism in America and about how the economic policies of neoliberalism are hurting ordinary people by making it impossible for them to live their lives. If you don't have childcare or you can't afford an affordable home, even if you have a job you're going to have a hard time making ends meet. And that's a reality for a lot of people. So why is it so difficult for us to imagine a society in which more of the benefits of our society are socialized while some of the risks are privatized. We have the exact opposite situation. We privatize the benefits and socialize the risk. You and I pay for failed banks. You and I pay the consequences of bad decisions on Wall Street.
Urvashi Vaid:
I think it should be the other way around. I think they should be responsible for their bad decisions and business should pay the consequences of its stupidity as I do if I make stupid decisions.
Farai Chideya:
As you're talking, I'm thinking about, first of all, the concept of too big to fail which is one of the leading arguments for why there should be protections for large entities. But I'm also thinking about just the very question of how America is doing right now because I've been doing a lot of work on the economy. And if the wage stagnation continues in America and there has been wage stagnation for years, are people even going to be able to buy less expensive things? So I think that there may be ... Maybe there's a way to even link a business argument to this which is that people have been dealing with huge loss of family net worth after the Great Recession including white Americans but more profoundly for people of color. It seems like we're in a bit of a fragile time here and yet we can't politically seem to pull it together and have a dialogue.
Urvashi Vaid:
Absolutely because we're stuck in very outmoded arguments of either/or and what is needed for the future of our country, and in fact, the environmental future of the world is a concerted effort that you could call socially responsible capitalism. That's what we need. We need an economic mechanism, an economic system that actually values social benefit as much as it values profit. If we could get there, then people could make a lot of money and be doing good. I think it's really possible and I'm encouraged by some of the younger leaders who are coming out of business schools and starting companies with that mindset. Social entrepreneurship is one piece of it, but I think it's got to be bigger than that.
Urvashi Vaid:
I think we've got to get like the mainstream companies somehow incentivize or prioritize the social benefit of what they do. They can't just be rewarded for short term decisions that will raise their paychecks. It's just a ridiculous system.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic. We're revisiting my 2014 conversation with LGBTQ organizer, lawyer and author, Urvashi Vaid, who died at the age of 63 last month, leaving a lasting legacy. Let's continue. One of the conversations we had earlier in our series was with Alec Ross, a former diplomat and author, who talked about the US government reclaiming a hold on some of the offshoring of taxes by US companies as one of the remedies for income inequality. which we had talked about. And I think there's definitely a lot of potential things, but we are at a bit of a political impasse right now in the US.
Farai Chideya:
So we've gotten so deep into questions of equality and the questions of the economy, but you also have a fascinating life story, not just your life as an immigrant kid and your parents and your college activism but also you have had a very long and flourishing relationship with Kate Clinton who is an activist and comedian and you also recently battled and won over breast cancer. When you look at your life now, could you have imagined, like let's say when you were a young college activist, the things that are very recent parts of your life like your struggle with cancer?
Urvashi Vaid:
No. When you're young, you think you're invincible and nothing's going to ... You just don't think about health crises, although as a young activist, I certainly had to deal with losing dozens and dozens of my friends to HIV/AIDS, but cancer was a shock. It was my second bout with cancer. I've battled thyroid cancer which is a more manageable kind of cancer and then I got breast cancer. And I was very lucky and I am deeply grateful because I had so much support. I cannot imagine people who have to deal with any illness without the support of insurance, of loving friends and family who stepped up and just lifted me up again and again, of great doctors, of access to transportation to get you to the hospital. I went to Memorial Sloan Kettering for my treatments and I could take a crosstown bus. That was amazing.
Urvashi Vaid:
Cancer is such an epidemic. Breast cancer for women is shockingly prevalent. and it's clearly environmentally related as well as affected by our genetic predispositions to something or another. But the shocking thing to me going through this experience is, at once, how little they know and how much they know. They don't really know like they can't really tell me you're "cured". They can tell me percentages and probabilities. They can't tell me 100% that I will never have a recurrence. I'm expecting not to, but I certainly know plenty of friends of mine who battled breast cancer who had recurrence and are no longer with us. I lost a friend in January, an amazing woman.
Urvashi Vaid:
So it's a weird thing, but you asked about the other part of my life, which is an amazing part of my life, which is my relationship with Kate Clinton, who is a writer and a comedian in her own right and my partner of 26 years.
Farai Chideya:
That's beautiful.
Urvashi Vaid:
It's amazing. She is spectacular. The perfect foil to my gloomy predisposition. We say we're the marriage of comedy and tragedy.
Farai Chideya:
That's so funny. I don't think of you that way. You just seem like two cool people and you're just so comfortable together like all great couples. You just seem to really be comfortable with each other. What was it that attracted you to her?
Urvashi Vaid:
Her kindness and her independence. She's a deeply compassionate kind person, an indescribable quality of appreciation that she has for others and of regard that she has for the world. And that's a real rare quality in comics who can be quite cynical. But I also love the fact that we're two very different people. And we used to ask people who are in long-term relationships, whether heterosexual or gay, "What's the secret to our relationship?" when we were newer in it because every relationship has its moments and its struggle sometimes.
Farai Chideya:
Absolutely.
Urvashi Vaid:
But universally, what people would say and what I would agree with is that the secret is communication. If that breaks down in a friendship or in a lover relationship, that's where the relationships get in trouble. So communication is about really making sure you're connecting, not cohabiting. It's about sharing even the hard stuff. And that's something that I've been lucky enough to have with her. And it certainly made my activism more rich in many ways. She gets me to lighten up. She gets me to laugh at myself and not take everybody seriously. She always says, she used to have this closing in one of her routines, which I loved where she would say, and I'm not going to do it like Kate does it so forgive me already.
Farai Chideya:
Disclaimer, Kate. Disclaimer.
Urvashi Vaid:
Disclaimer. But it was something to the effect that if somebody is saying like running a real line of crap on you about whatever it is and it's making you mad that the most powerful thing you can do is just burst out laughing at them. Just go, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," and then go, "Ha, ha, ha, oh, you mean it?" And she says, "They will never be able to say what they were saying with confidence again."
Farai Chideya:
Exactly.
Urvashi Vaid:
The power of laughter.
Farai Chideya:
My goodness. We could go on and on and I want to. I was going to ask you about many more things, but as it turns out, we have to get ready to play a little game, an exercise that we do here. So we get a previous guest to ask a question of our current guest. Take a listen.
Speaker 4:
I would be interested to know the last film that moved you to tears and why.
Urvashi Vaid:
Okay, the last film that moved me to tears ... Oh, now of course, I'm blanking on any film. Oh, my God. Fruitvale Station. I saw Fruitvale Station last summer and it was devastating, the story of a young African American man who gets killed by the police at a station stop in California. And the story is so beautifully told about the last day of his life. And it's just how random and outrageous violence by the police can be and yet how targeted it is to young African American males who are assumed to be doing something wrong, even when they are just getting on a subway. And it was just a beautiful story and that was a recent film that just devastated me.
Urvashi Vaid:
But I guess I have to say, historically, can I just mention my most moving film, the one that I go back to again and again? And that's The Battle of Algiers which is an incredible film made in the late '60s about the struggle of Algerian people against French colonization. And it's just a riveting movie because of the moral complexities of every character and I found it really powerful as a young activist. It just really lays out the challenges involved in fighting for freedom. It's not a clear righteous path.
Farai Chideya:
Wow. Those are two very powerful recommendations and I know many people felt that Fruitvale Station should have gotten an Oscar nod among other things. Urvashi, thank you so much.
Urvashi Vaid:
Thanks Farai.
Farai Chideya:
That was activist, author and lawyer, Urvashi Vaid, from our 2014 conversation for the podcast, One With Farai. Vaid passed away last month from cancer and leaving a legacy in LGBTQ liberation and a wide variety of other fields including philanthropy and criminal justice. Coming up next, Our Body Politic presents Numb from the podcast Truth Be Told. You're listening to Our Body Politic. Welcome back to Our Body Politic. Before we continue with the show, I want to first ask for your help on an upcoming episode. Next week, we're going to be talking about the latest in the hearings about the January 6th insurrection. And we want to know what questions you have about the House-select committee and the investigation into the January 6th insurrection.
Farai Chideya:
You can also let us know what you're feeling as this moment in democracy unfolds. Please let us know your questions so we can share them with our upcoming guests. You can give us a call. Our voicemail is (929) 353-7006. Again, that's (929) 353-7006, giving us the questions you have about the House-select committee and the investigation into January 6th. You can also find us on Twitter or Instagram @ourbodypolitic and send us questions there. Back to this week's show. On Our Body Politic Presents Series, we bring you stories and conversations from independent voices in audio. Today, we have a new offering from the podcast Truth Be Told hosted by Tonya Mosley. Their episode Numb features minister and writer Danté Stewart speaking on hope during times of violence and loss. Let's take a listen.
Tanya Mosely:
How many times have you started talking to someone recently about all that's been going on and you can't even get the words out? I can't. I just can't deal right now is something I keep hearing from my people. When the world hits us over and over and over and over again, we do what we need to do to make it through. Feeling numb can feel safe.
Danté Stewart:
What's the word when you feel like you have one but you actually don't?
Tanya Mosely:
What are the words when there are no words? Danté Stewart found out the other day while driving to a friend's baby shower.
Danté Stewart:
I'm driving and I turn on BeBe Winans singing What Do You Want The Lord To Say? And you hear nothing but clapping and clapping and loud clapping.
Tanya Mosely:
Danté's heart started to quickened almost on beat with the claps. No words made way to feel. And for the first time in a long time, Danté cried hard.
Tanya Mosely:
(singing)
Danté Stewart:
Yeah, it felt good. That's probably the only best way to describe it. It felt like I got a little bit closer to what I've been wanting to feel.
Tanya Mosely:
For this episode of Truth Be Told, I called up Danté, because like you, I needed a powerful message, a [inaudible 00:34:41] for my soul. Danté is a minister and a writer. And right after the massacre in Texas, he wrote a piece for the Oxford American called Little Experiments Of Liberation. One of those little experiments in liberation involves Danté doing what he can to feel, to sit in the music, to spend time with the people he loves and to shield the youngest of us like his three-year-old son, Asa, from his anxiety and fears about the world. I hope you're as moved by his words as I am.
Danté Stewart:
I don't want the ugliness and the meanness of the world to steal and destroy whatever laughter and joy our children deserve. I think at moments of trauma and terror is very easy to be overcome, overwhelmed, even so in some sense, defeated by the circumstances of our life and the circumstances we are forced to live in. And I think the choice to allow him to experience the joys of what it means to walk in school, then everybody say, "Asa," the joys of when I told him when he started running in front of me, I said, "You're going to leave me and not tell me you love me," and he turns around and stops and throws his arms in a little direction of his as if he's about to run back to me and I kneeled down to him and we begin to say our affirmations, "I am beautiful. I am kind. I am strong. I am loved. I can do anything. I will see you later."
Danté Stewart:
I want him to experience that because I know at some point he's going to come in contact with the meanness of the world and I want him to have something that has grounded him enough to say, "Despite everything, you have the choice to stay and some will and that's right and you have the choice to show up."
Tanya Mosely:
Those affirmations that you say to him every morning, those messages are important for him and also for you.
Danté Stewart:
Indeed, and it reminds me so much of my mother. My mother made us affirm who we are because she knew that, "If I can affirm who I am, then I can fight against what the world tries to make me or what it tries to undo in me," and that's particularly his humanity. And so when we are faced with so much inhumanity, we need an alternative imagination that accepts our humanity, fights forward, embrace it and remind us again and again and again and again that life is not just about resisting all of this, but it's about creating something different, something better.
Tanya Mosely:
The reminder that we're human, you actually call this moment, we're in a feedback loop of American violence that requires us in many ways to convince ourselves that we are indeed human, because being in a constant state of grief can actually numb us from our ability to feel. Can you say more about what you mean by that because in a way that numbness in some ways feels like the safest place to be.
Danté Stewart:
And I must agree that sometimes it is. James Baldwin has a quote that it is incredibly hard to see what we see. And I think when I'm imagining this feedback loop, the feedback loop is you're in a repetition of practice and action to where this loop becomes the norm, whereby it becomes a habit and it becomes so much a habit that it is thoughtless. And so when I think about the ways in which violence and trauma and grief and ugliness and pain and terror, guys, our American experience, we have been on a century's long feedback loop where you experience violence and pain, and then those in power tell, "You have to forgive and forget," and especially those who are of the faith perspective, "You have to move on."
Danté Stewart:
And then you think about the new cycle. The new cycle tells you, "Okay, well, two weeks from now and three weeks from now, we may have one essay on it. We may have one of this on it, but it's onto the next thing." And it's feedback loop over and over again makes us become numb to the reality that none of this should be normal, and granted and sadly, that is the situation that we have been forced into. We've been forced into and this is not an accident. This is actually by design that we have been forced into a continual feedback loop to where on one hand it's numb, for sure, but the feedback loop is also about exhaustion. If you can exhaust somebody's heart and their mind and their soul long enough, then at some point they're going to give up on trying to change the world or show up in the world as a full person. It just is what it is.
Danté Stewart:
And so in order for us to break the feedback loop, number one, we need help. We need a context in a country that will cherish and prioritize the wellbeing of its citizens rather than the power of those who are wealthy and those who are privileged. And part of me as a person of faith, I believe that things can change, but if they are going to change, then it will take way more than just the will of those who are grieving and in pain. Because when you are grieving, it's very hard to imagine what it means to show up in the world and fight, so we need help.
Tanya Mosely:
That's right. You mentioned James Baldwin. You're a James Baldwin scholar, and in your latest piece, you referenced a Baldwin quote that says, "How utterly improbable it is indeed miraculous that we can still have a drink or a pork chop or a laugh together." I'll try not to get emotional at that because I think that is the way that our people have been able to survive since the beginning of time, how humanity has been able to evolve since the beginning of time. What are you doing to feel your humanity and not live in fear in this very moment?
Danté Stewart:
That question is very hard, because oftentimes, I do live in fear. Oftentimes, I am so concerned about the problems of the world that I, oftentimes, forget the promise of myself, that oftentimes whenever situations of violence and pain and trauma occur, I feel like I have to force myself as a person of faith especially, to believe that the religion of those who would rather use the Bible and the church and theology as a weapon of power and control rather than the instrument of love and liberation. I have to force myself to believe that they will not win in the end, and so oftentimes, I am afraid, I am terrorized. And that's not even including the grief that we are forced into when we think about all the family members who were lost to COVID.
Danté Stewart:
My granddaddy had dementia and late stage dementia and dementia took his mind, but COVID took his body. He was an elderly man. He went into the hospital for ... Yeah, I'm going to try not to get emotional too. He went into the hospital because he broke some ribs. My grandmother, they'd been married for 60+ years. She got rid of all the furniture so that nothing in the house would be able to harm my granddaddy, that even if his mind couldn't articulate where he was going, he could at least find a place of safety in the comfort of his own home in Sugar Hill, South Carolina.
Danté Stewart:
And my granddaddy goes into the hospital, and because of policy, he stays there, and of course, he, a vulnerable old man who loves to meander and get into everything, and so few days later, literally, I get a call from my mother that granddaddy is not doing well. He's in the hospital and now they're putting him on ventilator. And granddaddy went into hospital without COVID, and five days later, he has COVID, and a day later, granddaddy is dead. And I'm having to sit at this funeral having lost one of my best friends in September of last year tragically to a motorcycle accident. My aunt died. His oldest daughter, then literally the day after her funeral, my granddaddy dies. And the day after his funeral, another aunt dies and I can be ...
Danté Stewart:
If I can be honest with you, it is so hard to live and be unafraid in this moment and we need to acknowledge that grief and terror and violence does not just rob us of our future. It oftentimes rob us of our present. And I must say I am often afraid, but when I think about what my granddaddy meant and what so many of these communities mean in the ways in which they give us more, like Baldwin said, I think I become less afraid because I realize there is more to live than just the life we've been given.
Tanya Mosely:
The future, you say, does not rest at the altar of power, but at the will of the people and that dark days require deep love. What does that look like?
Danté Stewart:
For me, that love means doing whatever you can in whatever way you must to remind yourself that you deserve the best things in life. I think one of the challenges we're facing in this moment is like the unfairness of everything. It is not fair that we live in a country where black people who are elderly, who know the name Emmett Till viscerally as they know their own breath have to also know the name George Floyd and have to also exist in a food desert and have to also exist in a country that fails to protect them. And then ultimately, they are murdered.
Danté Stewart:
It is not fair that children have to live in a country and parents have to live in a country with their children where the unthinkable, going to school, learning. Instead of being infused with education and imagination, one is infused with the hot lead of bullets and grief on the remains. That's not fair. And I think when we think about things that are not fair, there really is no answer but to do whatever you must to try and love yourself and tell yourself again and again and again that you matter. Maybe that looks like going and arguing at Congress. Maybe that looks like going and writing a poem. Maybe that looks like going and getting some rest and getting away. Maybe that looks like doing an interview. Maybe that looks like reading a book. Whatever you have to do to stay in tap with your humanity, that's what we must do.
Danté Stewart:
Because love for me, as I find it in the Bible, when Jesus says, "I come that they may have life and life to the full," whatever makes us as humans come alive, then we need to protect it and do it. And as Tony Morrison say, "Love this flesh and love it hard."
Tanya Mosely:
Danté Stewart is a minister, essayist and cultural critic. He's the author of Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle. Danté, thank you so much for this conversation.
Danté Stewart:
Thank you, Tonya. It's been good.
Rebecca Carroll:
"In this here place, we flesh, flesh that weeps, laughs, flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes, they'd just soon pick them out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And oh, my people, they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands. Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face because they don't love that either. You got to love it, you. And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it, they will not heed. What you scream from it, they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body, they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it." I am Rebecca Carroll reading Toni Morrison's beloved.
Tanya Mosely:
Rebecca is a journalist and author of several books. Her memoir, Surviving The White Gaze, is a must read. Our hearts are with the families of Uvalde, Texas and the loved ones of those murdered in Buffalo, New York.
Farai Chideya:
That was culture critic, Rebecca Carroll, reading from Toni Morrison's Beloved and minister and writer, Danté Stewart, talking with Tonya Mosley on the podcast Truth Be Told. The episode is from their current season, Season Four, and you can hear more episodes wherever you get your podcast.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya. Our Co-executive producer is Jonathan Blakely.
Farai Chideya:
Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister and Traci Caldwell are our booking producers. Emily J. Daly and Steve Lack are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
And a big thanks to Tonya Mosley and her team at Truth Be Told. Truth Be Told is a production of TMI Productions and is produced by BA Parker, Ishea Brown, Phyllis Fletcher and Enrico Benjamin - in association with Fearless Media.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.