Skip to content

Querida Duncalfe

Author

Menu
  • Peace by Piece: Unlearning Racial Bias
  • Something True
  • Undaunted
  • About Me
  • Subscribe
  • Merch
Menu
Peace by Piece

Piece 46: A Seat at the Table

Posted on August 9, 2021October 31, 2021 by Querida

This post is part of a year-long series. If my work is helpful for you, consider a contribution through Venmo to support this crucial work of unlearning racial bias.

I loved my second grade teacher Mrs. Cyrus. She was so kind and patient. And for a child who was shy, her kindness provided a constant, soothing balm to help me feel secure in her class. 

Source

Mrs. Cyrus’s classroom had posters on the wall of people who were famous and who had contributed to history in some way. It was in her classroom that I first learned about Shirley Chisholm. 

In addition to being the first woman and the first African-American to seek a major party presidential nomination, Chisholm was an educator and lifelong activist. She is often quoted as  having said, “If they won’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

In recent years, amid unrest and uprisings to draw attention to the plight of Black Americans because of systemically racist policies, many folks have built on Chisholm’s sentiment by amending it and stating, “If they won’t give you a seat at the table, build your own.”

Source

Take, for instance, Naomi Osaka’s recent decision to pull out of a prestigious tennis tournament. Initially, Osaka chose not to participate in the compulsory press conference/Q&A following a match. She understood the fine she’d incur by not engaging the press, and she voluntarily chose to pay the fine rather than submit herself to the microscope of press questions, in order to protect her own mental health. The organization that runs the tournament threatened Osaka with no longer being able to participate in the event, rather than respecting her decision to protect her health.

In other words, Osaka got up and left the table.

Consider, too, Nikole Hannah-Jones’s public departure from UNC Chapel Hill and subsequent attachment to Howard. After a months-long struggle to be awarded tenure in a tenured position Jones had already occupied, UNC students pushed the school’s board to meet and discuss Jones’s position, and thereby hold the board accountable for their shoddy handling of Jones’s job. When Jones subsequently announced her departure for the historically Black Howard University, she made an incredibly impactful statement about Black scholarship and the value of building on the legacy of excellence that institution has established in and for the Black community.

Source

Another way of saying this is that Jones left an ostensibly integrated table for a historically Black one.

In 2016, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were killed by police officers. A large-scale #blacklivesmatter protest in Dallas that should have been peaceful instead resulted in a lone gunman killing five police officers. Into this atmosphere of unrest arrived Solange Knowles’ album “A Seat at the Table.” 

In the album, Knowles speaks to this tension: Do we continue to struggle for space at a proverbial table that was never intended to treat Black people as equals, with meaningful gifts to offer in any given context, or do we build our own spaces? Do we try and try again to force our gatekeepers to make room for us at this table of the idyllic whitewashed American dream for prosperity and peace and omnipresent hope; or do we walk away to save our own peace and build spaces for us and by us?

As you listen to Knowles’ album and read about Nikole Hannah-Jones and Naomi Osaka, I hope you will consider the weight many African-Americans feel when considering our personal and professional decisions. Almost nothing we do that is of any consequence to people other than ourselves, is without a ripple effect that is invisible to our eyes but nonetheless deeply resonant within them.

Photo by Ingo Joseph from Pexels
  • Who has written the history you have learned? 
  • Have opposing viewpoints been represented, or have accounts been one-sided?
  • When Black public figures make professional decisions you don’t agree with, does your criticism issue from a place that acknowledges their humanity, or do you instead see them only as commodities or entertainers whose decision has resulted in an inconvenience for you? 
  • When in your life have you found yourself seated at a table of sorts, only to look around and see that you are the only person at the table who represents a specific demographic you embody? How did you feel in that circumstance? How did you conduct yourself once you realized your novelty?

I hope you’ll sit with these questions and the tension they awaken within you. Allow yourself to breathe through the tension and sit with it until you can begin to untangle some of the biases you perhaps didn’t know you held. We will keep working together to construct lasting peace for ourselves, our communities, and our families – one piece at a time.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Certain Kinds of Outlaws
  • The Slap Heard Around the World
  • Out of the Wilderness
  • Introducing: Matriarch
  • Episode 112: Faith and Mental Health with Kimberly Galindo

Recent Comments

  • Querida Duncalfe on Certain Kinds of Outlaws
  • Sheryl Stafford on Certain Kinds of Outlaws
  • Querida on The Slap Heard Around the World
  • Alicia J. on The Slap Heard Around the World
  • Querida Duncalfe on The Slap Heard Around the World

Archives

  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • August 2019
  • May 2019

Categories

  • history
  • Meditation
  • peace by piece
  • Podcast
  • Remember
  • Something True
  • Uncategorized
  • uncharted territory
  • Undaunted

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2022 Querida Duncalfe | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme
Cleantalk Pixel