I Realize

In the comments of my post about stress and race and health disparities, dark daughta said this:

"I'm going back up to read some more. But I wanted to stop here for a quick sec:"maybe the reality is that they don’t want to"It's hard to ground in the reality that white domination IS about giving certain people a disproportionte amount of stress so that others may experience joy and well being.People of colour and poor people carry the burden so that white people and affluent people don't have to.That's the point of this sick little game we call domination.This is a screaming affair when we think that all the helping professions are peopled overwhelmingly with white people and with affluent people.This is the reason why things don't seem to get any better. This is the reason why it seems like such an awful struggle for those who try to make change from within these power structures.Most governing structures aren't designed to make change. They're designed to uphold it while maintaining the appearance that they are trying to make things better.So, they do their "research", they write their documents, their papers, they publish what they've "found". But that's as far as it goes because that's as far as it's supposed to go.This is where the dance happens. People with good hearts and some politics who understand that there is power inside certain helping structures, inside certain service professions try to utilize these papers to make change.But it's like trying to shoe horn a whales fin into a man's shoe. One wasn't meant to fit into the other. It just isn't supposed to happen.It's a ritual dance. An energy absorbing dance. An emotion screaming, hair pulling out dance.And when it gets to be enough, when the crying and struggling and hoping for some sort of substantial change inside any given system or profession gets to be enough for those who struggle, when enough is enough, they say you're burnt out.They never say, the system was designed in such a way so as to wear your resolve down, to grind you down until nothing remains and until you blame yourself for not being smart enough, strategic enough, enough of a player of the game. It's your fault you, not the system buckled.Don't buckle. But I think you realize what you're dealing with as you study midwifery, no?"

What you’re talking about is what I call one of my conspiracy theories. I do realize it…what I’m up against…the situation as it stands. I realize it’s not supposed to get better…it’s not supposed to change…it is my opinion that this is why we have committees in institutions, to keep track of how much “progress” is being made so that if at any point there is a threat of changing the balance, it can be stopped dead in its tracks. I realize that the illusion is that by working hard and playing by the rules (most times :O) things will begin to change. I realize that the master’s tools are not supposed to be able to dismantle the master’s house. I would love to create change by stepping completely out of the preset world of academic midwifery…in my dreams I am a homebirth midwife warrior who works with teenage women in my community…not just to catch their babies…but to talk…to listen…to teach…to learn…to live out my days surrounded by life and death and love…and then I would go to those places where the academics gather and say whatever it is I need them to hear and then turn around and walk right back out…home to my family, where I’m home schooling 5 kids with the man, and peeling yams, and then locking myself into a room of my own to write until I fall asleep with the pen in my hand until the phone rings and it’s LaCreshia on the other end saying can you come now? But alas, I am not that girl, that woman, just yet…and truthfully, maybe never. Right now I am still enchanted by a real size paycheck that will pay everything on time and leave a little for world travel…by owning a home of my own…by king crab and good steak…because I’m tired of quiet hours and no smoking and cars that break down and loans and ramen noodles. It’s a step up from roaches and slum lords and section 8, but, still, it aint. Even if I believe that you can never escape your class because it’s learned and it’s your teeth, and your speak, and the way you hold your silverware, your book…wait, if you’re holding a book at all…I still want it…because I’m tired of not having it. I want to know what it’s like to paint my walls without fear. To pick out my own refrigerator. To buy what I like when I like, even if I do see the lack of discipline it encourages.

Even in my frustration at myself for whatever I feel like I don’t do…I still realize that the system, this country, has failed me. Better, that it was never for me in the first place. That all I was ever meant to do was work for it, for them, until I could no longer work or lost my mind. I know that I’m supposed to break my back for it, and then be grateful that I was allowed to do so. And, I realize that what I’m doing can be considered just that. I realize it, and it hurts. I’m trying not to buckle, but it’s hard. I’m trying to play the game, but I’m tired. I’m trying to do the dance, but it’s not my kind of beat. And it becomes more and more obvious as time goes on, which is why midwifery in this place is so hard.

Yes, I realize what I’m dealing with, dark daughta, and it keeps me up at night. I am supposed to want all of this because that’s what it means to be a first generation college student. I’m supposed to want it because they never had it…because our car was always worth more than the house we lived in…because the schools never intended to prepare me for it… I am supposed to want it because I’ve just paid $100,000 to have it. And most days I do want it.

But there are days. Days when I think…but this isn’t even what you want…this isn’t what’s going to help the people you keep saying you want to help. How many black girls are gonna make it to the schools I’ll end up teaching at? Already they tell me my research interests won’t earn any funding, and until I have position in hand, I should read/write about this instead, because this is where the money is…so, really, what do I think I’m doing? It’s all swirling and I’ve been struggling with what to do and when to do it and why. About whether I really can make change from the inside, or if I really do have to do the work of creating a way of midwifing that speaks to me, specifically...and if I'm willing to give up the security of academia to do so.