Episode 9: NO CAPES!
At the chopping board
I am a human being who is shaped by other human beings.
I will take the time to research and explore even my favorite human beings.
I will make room for other human beings to let me down, because human beings will do that.
I will make room for myself to let others down, because human beings will do that.
When I have been disappointed, or have let others down, I will remember that I can always be a better version of myself.
Critical thinking is not my kryptonite and I am not a Superhero.
I will survive a loving exploration into myself and others.
Fish Sandwich
No Capes!
A Reading From Black Lesbian Socialists
“To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”
----The Combahee River Collective.
In 1977, the Combahee River Collective penned these words in the Combahee River Collective Statement. They had been meeting and writing together for years (a word and instruction on its own). For more on this statement, I highly suggest Dr. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s “How We Get Free,” which contains both the original manifesto as well as some interviews and contextual history about the Collective. You can also view the statement for free here.
For 2021, I decided to journey with this statement as if it were a sacred text, because it is. 44 years later. I’ve committed to exploring all that has happened between then and now. To sit with the words that fall off the pages. To be convicted by the imagery. To write in the margins. To talk back when I disagree, to keep notes, to contextualize the time and place of its writing. I’ll be sitting with this text and letting it sit with me.
When I think of what it means to be human, I think of what it means to be a god. Or a superhero. No better example of this tension between being human and not-human can be seen outside of The Incredibles. Now, I really wish The Incredibles were a Black family, because that’s the closest I feel to being understood by a cartoon. They’re not at all perfect, but they say sorry when they can.
But the best character in The Incredibles wasn’t Elastigirl. OR Mr. Incredible. Or Dash, or Violet, or even Jack Jack.
It was Edna Mode.
Edna Mode was the fashionable auntie. The trustee who acts like she don’t like children, but somehow you got candies and crayons in your purse when they sit with you in worship.
Edna Mode had an iconic bob. Stiff WHERE? She was a family friend, who in both Incredibles Movies played a PIVOTAL role in the plot. In the first, she helps design a suit that tracks Mr. Incredible so that Elastigirl can find him. In the second, she designs a suit that is tailored to Jack Jack’s unexplainable and hard to control powers. She even makes a suit that has a flame extinguisher foam, blackberry lavender flavored and edible! Edna thinks of EVERYTHING!
But she said something in the first episode that just doesn’t let me go.
NO CAPES.
Mr. Incredible comes to Edna Mode to get a suit fixed. When she calls it a “rag,” she decides to design a new one. And while she and Mr. Incredible are dreaming out loud, he says something she cannot stand.
Here, let me recite it for you. (Or you can see the scene here)
Bob: “Yeah. Something classic, like– like Dynaguy. Oh, he had a great look! Oh, the cape and the boots…”
Edna: “No capes!”
Bob: “Isn’t that my decision?”
Edna: “Do you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers, nice man, good with kids.”
Bob: “Listen, E–”
Edna: “November 15th of '58! All was well, another day saved, when… his cape snagged on a missile fin!”
Bob: “Thunderhead was *not* the brightest bulb…”
Edna: “Stratogale! April 23rd, '57! Cape caught in a jet turbine!”
Bob: “E, you can’t generalize about these things–”
Edna: “Meta-Man! Express elevator! Dynaguy! Snagged on takeoff! Splashdown! Sucked into a vortex! NO CAPES!”
I know this was for humor’s sake, but it has been sitting with me for the last month.
Sometimes the capes we put on people can drag them to their misery. And the capes we put on people can drag us down alongside them.
Help us God.
Today’s text is just that one line from the Combahee River Collective. For the last few months, I keep hearing this one phrase. Loudly.
“To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”
I want to be human. I once clung tightly to what it means to be Black, to be Queer, to be Woman, to be Christian. I still (for now) identify heavily with these terms. But underneath all of those terms, I want to be human. Not as a denial of the contours that make me who I am, but as an affirmation of my human needs.
Humans need safe places to lay their heads at night, good and delicious food, a few outfits that fit my body and not the mannequin, the kind of love that makes me feel safe, touch, a place to fall apart, a place to be put together, quality doctors, a promise that when I leave my house to go for a run that I won’t be harassed by creepy men in/out of uniform.
I don’t just want that for me. I want every human to have that and more.
To be human is to be given room to grow. I think to be human is to be held accountable to the right height of responsibility. I want to be close enough to Earth that we remember our fleshly-ness. I don’t want gods on Earth. In my tradition, we believe that happened at least once and you see how that turned out.
I think this verse from the book of Combahee sits so heavily on my heart because we are in the middle of so many pedestal factories. Our VP is a Black and South Asian AKA who went to Howard University. Georgia now has a Black senator, the first in its history.
We had a young Black poet at Inauguration named Amanda Gorman. Streaming services now have lists of Black stories featuring limited depictions of Black experience because they all got called out with Black squares in June. Beyonce (I know) gave us a list of Black owned businesses to support in a pantyline, in a WHOLE panopticon! Jay-Z and Pharell made a video featuring Black entrepreneurs and the chorus is mostly the two of them repeating the phrase “Black man” over and over again, as they highlight Black-owned businesses.
We have been traumatized for the last 4(00ish) years by the White House and all that comes out of it. We are desperate for food. But manna and quail isn’t meant to sustain you, it’s just meant to hold you over until you’re in a place called home, where you can keep a beehive, and herd some cows. It’s why the prophet in Jeremiah says to a people in exile, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” I must admit, i don’t even know what home is… This is a nation built on violently stolen land and violently stolen labor. What even is home for me?
When people have been traumatized by the evil of The Empire, we grasp for ways for it to never happen again. There’s a reason why Leviticus and Deuteronomy show up after the E/exodus. These books gets a bad rap because most people who want to poke holes in its pages are very much Anti-Semitic. Progressive Christians like to position the Old Testament God as one of “Wrath,” and the New Testament as the God of “Grace.” I’ve heard people say, “of course God is nicer in the New Testament; having a child will mellow you out.” These are ideas I used to hold myself, but I don’t anymore out of solidarity with Jewish comrades, especially Black Jewish comrades. Leviticus also gets kicked from the Woke Table because of its supposed comments about homosexuality and shellfish, which we can also interrogate on another day.
But beyond those passages (which have been twisted by strange White Christians and people who want to be them), there are passages about community in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. About how to take care of the stranger. About debt forgiveness. About ways to live in relationship with the Earth so that no living creature is in need or exploited. These are good things! Because a communally traumatic event (like surviving a series of executive orders from Presidents or Pharaohs) requires a new way to live.
Sometimes, being traumatized for so long makes people grasp for wind. Vapors. People grasp for faces in places. Seeing someone who “looks like you” makes you feel a level of safety you haven’t felt in years. Be careful. That’s how Obama drank water in Flint to prove that it was healthy. this happened. And that’s how we get got.
In the Second Incredibles Movie, something dangerous happened.
Following an era of anti-hero rhetoric (because heroes are dangerous and cause damage to the city), there was this PR push to affirm heroes. Winston Deavor, a rich telecommunications guru, was inspired to reach out to the Supers and make supers great again! We get the sense, as an audience, that Winston is someone we should trust. He’s rich, but that’s because he made his money the right way. And he had an inheritance so we can't blame him for that.
To the crowd gathered in one scene, he says: It's time to make some wrong things right! Help me bring supers back into the sunlight. We need to change people's perceptions about superheroes, and Elastigirl is our best play.
And that’s when all of us should get nervous. Because at this point, Elastigirl is no longer a human, or even a superhero. She’s a play. She’s a strategic player. She no longer exists for herself, but for the objectives of a larger project. Winston and his crew basically built a PAC for superheroes.
In another scene, on this boat called the EverJust (which is part of their inheritance) , all these heroes gathered to celebrate a new era. Except something was wrong.
Their minds were being controlled. How? By these glasses they’d all been given from the corporation. Winston’s angry sister Evelyn was controlling it all. (who i think was traumatized and didn’t have healthy outlets to process)
And once they had gained support from the masses, Evelyn used these heroes to do her bidding. She had them fighting each other. Promising violence. Threatening civilians. All under the control of these devices made by Evelyn, who had a personal vendetta to pitch Supers as dangerous.
It makes me think of Edna’s advice. Every bit of the suit should have a purpose.
Once the supers wear goggles made by corporations or flag pins on their lapels, they are no longer our heroes. They are our opponents. And we who believe in freedom have to get ready for the battle. Some people’s task is to be like Rep. Cori Bush (who I pray for DAILY). Some people’s task is to be the political educator. Some people’s task is to make healing food for people who are otherwise drained. Some people make art that inspires thought. There are so many ways to be involved, but please know…
The superheroes are not our saviors. We save ourselves. It is still our job to do the work that is in our laps. No amount of “we have the senate!” will make it less necessary for you to do what YOU need to do in your own community.
NO CAPES.
What I love about Edna Mode is that she says one thing but she does something else, in a trickster kind of way. She says, “I never look back darling, it distracts from the now.” But she had the foresight to know that capes are dangerous. And in a funny turn of events in the FIRST Incredibles movie, the villain in the story is thwarted by a cape he wanted to wear.
Syndrome, who desperately wanted to be a hero from childhood, falls to his demise after causing all this destruction and havoc… how? Because his cape got caught up. NO CAPES!
So I would like to offer a challenge. For the sake of the challenge, the following idea assumes that these efforts are worthwhile and that we can reason with representatives of the United States. We’re going to pretend that this is possible, for the sake of the thought experiment. Let us imagine that we can hold someone who wears a United States flag pin on their lapel accountable. Whatever THAT means.
When people we know (and even love) become elected officials, we have at least two choices. When we have relationships with them, either Greek, professional, or school-based, or otherwise we can lean on those relationships to tell the truth. Because there are people those folks won’t and can’t hear from.
If you have someone’s ear, I mean, ACTUALLY have it, don’t waste it.
So here are two options of many:
1. We can love everything they say and do because we think their accomplishment alone will save us. We can project our own accomplishments through them because the famous and influential people near us mean that we are also potentially-famous and influential. We can shut everyone down whoever has a question or comment. Because the more those comments and questions come up, the more we feel attacked. Because we have actually overidentified with people. This is the point in the movie when people remind you that they also pledged that fraternity and went to that school in Atlanta.
And I’m not saying this with a judgmental tone, because I’m still learning not to do this with Beyoncé. Pray my strength in the Lord. Because I, too, like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils. *facepalm*.
There is another option.
2. We can have tough conversations about commitments and priorities, because we trust that the relationship is elastic enough to hold it.
These are two of many choices. Elected officials theoretically represent us. Which means we get to ask questions. If you’re invested in formal politics, it is our job to ask questions, at the very least.
Now is the time to ask questions about the Israeli occupation and U.S. militarism and the terrorizing of Black people globally. Now is the time to ask why police forces use similar tactics internationally and why gas canisters made in one factory terrorize Black protestors in Ferguson and in Palestine. Now is the time to ask questions about Defunding the Police. Especially in a pandemic, it makes no sense that police departments get all kinds of coin to dress up like something out of Star Wars. All while nurses use plastic bags as PPE and reuse face masks to care for COVID patients.
May this pandemic be an apocalypse that reveals the absurdity of our priorities. Lives are always at stake.
Personally, I commit to watch how every elected official will vote on defense budgets, stimulus checks, Medicare for all and other things. Because that’s my responsibility.
This does not make us “unsatisfiable,” “entitled,” “cynical,” “perfectionist-beyond-practicality.” And even if we were, we have every right to be. We have watched this nation sacrifice Black, Brown, disabled and chronically-ill, Queer, Trans, poor, uninsured, undocumented, and otherwise disenfranchised people for Years. We are traumatized. We watched makeshift hospitals be built. We watched a Black doctor named Susan Moore plead for her life because hospitals choose not to give care to Black people. We are watching family homes be stolen because of racist financing. We’re watching people be evicted, and being evicted ourselves.
One of the most meaningful things anyone can say to me about this podcast is, “You make me feel like I can imagine something else.” That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m trying to do. But, I frequently feel like people read me as impossible to please, as eternally upset or underwhelmed, as unsatisfiable.
I am only this way because I believe we deserve so much more than what is. I am, and we are, this way because we've seen glimpses of Heaven, here.
I am, and we are, only this way because we love us.
Because to listen to someone you love say, "I know he forgot my birthday and only calls when he wants money, but I love him anyway," it's the worst kind of pain. You can't make someone see that they deserve more until they’re ready to.
I wish people I loved knew that they didn't have to accept crumbs from the Master's table. $600 is insulting. $1400 is insulting. So much needs to be unsettled for us to be fully free.
It's frustrating to be categorized as "one of those perpetually mad folks," because no one ever asks, "why is she mad?"
Today I'm mad that we spent all that money on an inauguration and people are still being evicted. People are going to work because they actually have no choice.
We got a lot to be mad about. I don't understand why anyone would expect us to turn our Opinion Switch to the "off" position just because we have a new president.
We, the people, have every right to be skeptical of the Powers. That’s why some of us couldn’t rejoice when the election was called. We knew that integration into the project might make it nearly impossible to leverage a critique of the very real and heavy boots on our necks.
My fear is that we won’t scream when it’s time to scream. My fear is that folks are going to let us down, and we will be so busy trying to make sure we get another go at being included that we let people die. Because that’s what’s happening. It’s already happening.
We’ve made it out of one kind of terror. I think it was right that the people rejoiced when the Pharaoh's horses and chariots fell into the sea. I think Miriam was right to lead the people in a protest song as the waters closed up behind them. But we’re not out of the water yet.
But I also think the story would have looked a lot different if people questioned “what does freedom mean in this new place? Whose land are we in? How can we eradicate the tendency to reproduce carceral logics even when there are no cops or soldiers around wearing the uniforms we’re used to?”
I’m speaking specifically to people who engage in politics in the electoral way. This is not for the people who have divested from politics. I actually think people spend too much time convincing non-voters to vote when we need to spend more time teaching voters how to press and build.
If you’re invested in politics, it is your job to ask questions at the very least. This will be an excellent case study in the possibility/limits of “holding officials accountable.” Is it possible? I’ve never seen so many selfies with someone, not since Mr. Lewis passed.
If it is possible to hold elected officials accountable, then we will see it here. Because a good number of opinionated people claimed a relationship to him. I saw so many selfies of The Newly Elected Senator and happy colleagues/friends/former classmates. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing! It conjures the image of “laying on of hands.” There's a reason ordinations include the ritual of laying hands. There’s a reason why we place emphasis on who our Prophytes are. There’s a reason why we Google someone we’re going on a date with from OkCupid. Because I need to know what the world says of you, who you’re connected to, who your people are. It needs to be said that someone knows you. And I don’t mean, did you get credit or awards for something. I don’t mean, “are you a celebrity enough.” I mean, “Someone sees you” as opposed to, “you’re doing things to be seen.” Something similar to the linguistic difference between “being ‘seen’ and being ‘viewed’,” as we say. Ordination, as a metaphor, is about accountability to a community and a tradition.
Or, rather, it should be. Of course, many times it is not and there are many hoops that only certain people have to jump through to make it possible. We can come back to that on another day.
Personally, I commit to watch how elected officials vote on defense budgets, stimulus checks, Medicare for All, and other things. Because that’s my responsibility. It is also my responsibility to fill in the gap where elected officials say they cannot be courageous. It is my, and our, job to share what we have with mutual aid networks because the government has abandoned us. It is our responsibility to house people who have been evicted. It is our responsibility to make sure everybody gets something nourishing to eat. Because we are human. And we have human needs.
Getting here was no easy feat. It took the work and organizing of so many people and collectives. Now that we are here, we have a responsibility. We are trying to live and survive a pandemic while Black. It is significantly more serious this go round. But it’s always been for us. I want whatever gets me closer to having my human needs met. Not at the expense of anyone else, domestically or internationally. Not at the expense of my neighbor who did not go to school where I did. Not because I did anything special to be deserving of clean air and water.
But because I’m a human. And, “To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”
And that’s on Mary Had A Little Lamb.
OKAY?
To Go Bag
We all have people that we admire and look up to. We love their books, their speeches, their music, their whatever.
What specifically do you admire about that person? And how can you replicate those qualities in your own life? How do you discern the difference between projecting your own desires onto someone and living your life through them as opposed to being inspired to do your own thing? Think about it!
Toodles, my chicken noodles!