A Quote by Alicia Garza
The reason that I started the Black Futures Lab is because I have some clarity about what I think needs to happen in relationship to electoral organizing. It's not a destination. It is a set of tools that we use to engage people that we care about, en masse, around issues that are important to us.
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Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.
Some people think elections are a game: who's up or who's down. It's about our country. It's about our kids' future. It's about all of us together. Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some difficult odds. We do it, each one of us, against difficult odds. We do it because we care about our country. Some of us are right, and some of us are not. Some of us are ready, and some of us are not. Some of us know what we will do on day one, and some of us haven't thought that through.
We need to address issues our people think about and talk about. Because there is a feeling that Europe elites are addressing different issues. Not the ones that people care about.
Stories about sensitive issues like sex, drugs or sexual assault, suicide and teen drinking, are often censored because people just don't want to talk about those things. It's not that these things don't happen, but when they're shared in a fictional setting, for some reason they make some people uncomfortable.
It's always good to be around people who get it and understand because it's a huge difference working on a black set. I can walk on a black set and not have to worry about my hair because they know.
People think, for some reason, that I don't care about creativity and art, or helping people. So I would say that the biggest misconception is, when you think about me, when you think about my name, I don't want you to think about design or clothes or music. I want you to think about a person that's just trying to help people.
It's important for us to fight for certain changes that need to happen. And one of those issues that I really care about is education. But also another one is incarceration.
Toni Morrison is challenged regularly because she is a black author who writes about the real world. She speaks with so much knowledge about black issues she can't be accused of creating these (issues). People find these issues threatening.
I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.
The women's movement gave me a set of tools to think about things like my body and how people react to me and the way that my dating life was going. It's a very practical movement - yes, it's about issues like how we can get more women MPs elected, but it's also about how feminism affects things like your relationship.
I think a lot about race and the burdens of representation. There's an idea that because I'm writing a book set around the time of the Great Migration, and happen to be black, I'm trying to write a definitive account of the Great Migration, the so-called "black experience." That's not what I'm doing, and it can be frustrating.
The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues.
THE MAGIC AND THE DANGER OF FICTION IS THIS: it allows us to see through other eyes. It takes us to places we have never been, allows us to care about, worry about, laugh with, and cry for people who do not, outside of the story, exist. There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.
What I say about myself, black footballers or black pop stars is that we have been 'elevated out of blackness.' Because when people see us, they don't see us as being black. These are the issues that we should address.
Much as I respect Russell Brand's point of view, I'm in the opposite camp to him about voting. I think it's enormously important to engage with the electoral process.
I care about the people I know and love the most, but I also care about what the people I don't know think in the sense that I want them to think and understand me in a certain way. I don't base my life around either one, and I don't change the way I live to please either set of people, but I do care.
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