Crossing the Street: Attack Dogs, Whistle Blowing and the Disposing of Black Women
By Amber Butts
The human and the dog compound each other’s constructed viciousness in a mutual ‘becoming against,’ the consequence of which is that the image of the vicious dog pursuing the slave has become part of a collective consciousness that compulsively recreates—and each time reignites—the association of the vicious dog with blacks. — Afro-Dog
In 2004, Nigerian-American Omaroseonee (shortened to Omarosa) O. Manigault appeared on The Apprentice, Trump’s reality television show. They continued their friendship for 14 years. Omarosa’s net worth is 3.5 million dollars.
On August 14th, 2018, Omarosa, who had since been hired and then fired as director of African American outreach in the Trump Administration, released her first book, Unhinged. It details horribly racist and misogynistic interactions she’s had with Trump and his administration. When Omarosa was interviewed about the details of her book, interviewers like Savannah Guthrie focused on Omarosa’s integrity, questioning whether she went against “the honor system” by sneaking a recording device into the Situation Room to capture conversations to support her claims. And some of us focused on her integrity too, enough to claim we didn’t care when Donald Trump called her a “low-life” and a “dog” (prior to this, some of us were celebrating that she got “fired” from the White House last year). One Fox reporter claimed that these insults were a compliment. These are all clear anti-Black dog-whistles that ascribe who is deserving, worthy and capable.
Donald Trump believes that Black women in power are vicious, wacky, deranged dogs with extraordinarily low IQ’s. If you reinforce, celebrate, laugh and/or align yourself with any of this rhetoric, you are anti-Black and are no different than Omarosa aligning herself with Trump and fucking over Black people. Period.
Omarosa’s father was murdered when she was seven years old. In 2011, the year she turned 36, her brother was murdered in his home. In early 2012, her partner Michael Clarke Duncan had a heart attack and never recovered. He died two months later.
There are no truly sparkly Black people. There is only Vaseline and coconut oil to rub in the hard parts, make them appear softer. Sometimes, the sparkles come from dry metal bones and blood.
As soon as we are met with/ reminded that a Black person (including ourselves) has been touched by anti-Blackness/ misogynoir/ classism/ ableism/ etc., we so often refuse to hold it.
Last week, I was walking to a magazine launch from my house when it started to get dark. I had the urge to cross the street because I was approaching a group of Black un-housed men playing loud music and I had already passed another two groups prior to it. They were watching me. Or they were noticing/seeing me.
When I walked through the crowd of men, I worried that I’d be consumed. That these men would like the taste and crunch of me in their mouths. That I would be torn to shreds and my family would experience the fire and sting of it.
But I decided not to cross the street. I walked through the crowd, spoke my hellos and passed safely. In the midst of moving through, I felt this incredibly calm pressure.
I reminded myself or someone else sent me the reminder that my feelings of uneasiness are valid because I have witnessed and experienced trauma at the hands of Black men. Because other Black women have experienced trauma at the hands of Black men. But I succumb to this uneasiness because I have been conditioned to.
In real time, I confronted and am confronting this conditioning. This urge to decide on a narrative for other Black folks I don’t know. This urge to typecast them without noticing who and what they are. If instead I had crossed the street, I would be actively engaging in my conditioning to anti-Blackness and anti-Black violence. I would be ignoring how this has influenced the way I see Black men and other Black folks in general.
Being in this city means having a commitment to seeing everyone/ Black folks as people. Regardless of their status.
On this day (and days like it), I am holding Black men accountable to the misogynoir and violence they have enacted against us. Black men’s mysogynoir has led to our deaths. And regarding every Black man as violent is inherently wrong.
We have been socialized to consume each other in the hope that we do the consuming before we become the consumed.
Mysogynoir is a byproduct of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy. When we refuse the intentional, gendered and anti-Black narrative that all Black men are violent, we build up our capacity to imagine and cultivate community presently and in the future.
Similar to refusing the narrative that all Black men are violent, we can hold certain truths about Black women like Omarosa.
In the midst of aligning herself with Trump, Omarosa strategized, preyed on and deliberately lied to Black people. She sought us out in churches, sermons, schools and conventions. These policies have killed, impoverished and incarcerated us. They’ve had a specific impact on Black women and our ability to survive. Especially dark skinned Black women.
Omarosa was at one point a ward/ steward of the state and now she is an enemy of it. We can mistrust her and refuse the anti-Black representation that she is a dog. We can hold her accountable for actively participating in anti-Black policies. We can recognize that, for fourteen years, she aligned herself with and held on to a relationship with an anti-poor, anti-Black, anti-woman and anti-immigrant rapist.
“But as much as law has put the dog’s potential relapse into ferociousness at the heart of the debate over property, the slave’s status as property has only been viable if the slave’s untamable predisposition is ignored. Like a symptom, however, this disavowal was bound to resurface in what we may call the ‘Cujo Effect.’” — Afro-Dog by Bénédicte Boisseron
Too often when we talk accountability, what we really mean is punishment. It’s become a buzzword now.
Accountability is holding someone responsible for the harm they’ve caused. Punishment embraces punitivity and focuses on penalty. We must always be clear about what we mean when we say accountability. If we continue to reinforce punishment, dragging culture and disposability, we are operating in the same anti-Black world that has succeeded in killing, criminalizing and denying our humanity. This punishment of Black people in particular drives Trumpism. So when we reinforce Trump’s dog comments against Omarosa, we align ourselves with him.
We can hold her accountable without denying her humanity. We can hold the fact that she experienced something in that house with white walls and white bodies, white napkins and white souls. She is not an animal in need of a harness.
Today, I’m thinking about Omarosa and her late partner, Michael Clarke Duncan, who died in 2012. About Black bodies. About loneliness. And the constant mourning of folks everyone else has forgotten. About trying to get through the day. About what we choose into and out of. About judgement and impulse and fear. About accountability and seeing. About exhaustion. About coming home and falling apart and never being pulled back together because your resources are spread thin. Or you’re the strong friend. And/or because folks romanticize the getting through. It is all you’ve ever known.
I am not saying that Omarosa’s loss propelled her to maintain a relationship of 14 years with one of America’s most dangerous men. I am saying that we need to interrogate the anti-Blackness that is involved in us distancing ourselves from her enough to agree that she is a dog.
I am saying, yes. Hold Omarosa accountable for aligning herself with Trump. And hold yourself accountable when you refuse Black humanity and participate in anti-Blackness. And remember that accountability does not mean punishment.
Part of punishment is the spectacle. Watching someone be denigrated and believing that it is what they deserve. We should always consider the preferred type of action we’d like when we fuck up: is the process one of accountability or punishment? Both?
As you move through the world, ask yourself:
Is this my gut?
Or, is this another facet of anti-Blackness?
Is it both?
What are my commitments?
Am I protecting myself by disregarding another person? Where do all the folks we’ve thrown away go?
Do they have water?
Do I care?
Perhaps this kind of “I don’t care what happens to so and so” is also a reinforcement of anti-Blackness. Let’s complicate our stories.
We can reject the classist, anti-Black work that folks have done and acknowledge the world of anti-Blackness they exist in and are abused by as well. We can commit to Black nuance as politic and practice every day.
Suggested Readings:
Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible, 2011
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon, 2018
Psyche A. Williams, Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power, 2006
Amber Butts is a writer, educator and tenants rights organizer from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Blaqueerflow, KPFA’s Women’s Magazine Radio and 6×8 Press. She is currently at work on an afro-futurist novel focused on themes of intergenerational trauma, imagination, Black survival and environmental racism. Amber’s writing challenges multiple systems of oppression through the use of queer and womanist frameworks. She works to amplify the stories of poor Black folks, with an emphasis on mamas, children and elders. She believes in asking big and small questions that lead to tangible expressions of freedom and liberation.
Amber likes cheese and comic books and sings louder than she needs to.
