NO MORE MONKEY BUSINESS

A year ago I wrote a piece called My Walk, My Worth, My Will Not Budge.  I shared my views about the equating of human and animal life as seen through my eyes – those of a black woman whose experience has given me a particular vantage point on that issue.  I had no plans to address any of the points contained therein again; I thought I'd said all I had to say.

Until three weeks ago. 

It's a Tuesday afternoon.  I am sitting at one end of a bench on a subway platform; an Asian woman sits at the other.  With her is a young black boy, adorable and wide-eyed, about 3.  I do not know if he is her son or nephew, friend's child, or if she is his nanny.  He is restless, getting on and off the bench repeatedly and engaging in curious interplay between himself and the wall.  After a few minutes of this, she smiles and says “Okay, settle down little monkey. You're such a little monkey!” 

Everything in me goes cold.

Hearing that phrase run through my mind over and over into the evening, I log on to Facebook and post the following status update:

Please do not affectionately call cute, active black toddlers or children "little monkey. Just please don't.

I share it as a request to those who wish to be better allies.  I do not post it as an entry into debate, as I don't find any part of it debatable.  So when I come across a suggestion that my status may in fact be unjustified, I immediately and involuntarily feel walls erect around myself.  That the suggestion comes from another person of colour moves it from angering and to unsettling.  I am shocked and - I think - a bit hurt, although the shock precludes my certainty of that.  I have no interest in having to defend what from my perspective seems wildly apparent.  As a result, my response is cold and unnecessarily curt.  It isn't intentional.  It is that thing that happens inside of me when I know that something going any further, in that moment, can only result in an ending that I will later regret.  Despite my acknowledging this and apologizing for what may have seemed harsh, my sister gently chides me for it later.  

The center of my life is trying to operate from a place of truth and compassion.  I stumble in the latter.  A lot. My sis will always let me know when I betray myself, even when I can't see that that's what I'm doing.  In this instance she calls me out for my tone, which leads to me spilling my feelings to her in a way that I wasn't willing to online.  I don't need to explain my stance to my sister.  She listens, understands, then responds with “Maybe you could have explained that instead.”

Yes, I could have.  Maybe I should have.  Not just to one person, because it would be naïve to think that the opinion expressed was a solitary one, but to anyone out there who – and I'm sure there are a surprising number – don't see why it's such a big deal. 

It can be very difficult and exhausting to not only have to deal with the things that you hear and see as a black person on a daily basis, but to then have to defend your feelings about those things when you elucidate them, as if you somehow must prove your right to deem them rational.

“You're such a little monkey!” 

I have heard white women and men use that phrase to describe their children many, many times, and it always gives me a feeling.  The feeling is not anger or upset –  it is a strange sadness tinged with a wisp of something else, envy perhaps.  It is the deep knowing that Caucasian people can so readily say and do things in so many areas of their lives that carry no burden or meaning for them behind that which is intended in the moment.  A term like "little monkey" has no sociopolitical relevance in their day-to-day, no historical terrain on the map of their own lives.  It's just a phrase.

I stated in that Facebook thread - the one in which I asked that "monkey" not be used to refer to black children, that I am not suggesting that anyone who says it secretly harbours racist views and is actually thinking “Dirty coon baby!” internally.  I believe that they are saying to a black child, with the same affectionate spirit, what they would a white child.  I am not someone who buys into allegations of either sexism or racism until I am convinced of them and thoroughly understand them.  We live in a knee-jerk reaction world and I believe that devoid of contextual understanding within which to frame and thereby comprehend things, it is possible for actions, words and the messages they carry to be misconstrued or misinterpreted.  Often.

This is not one of those situations.  There is no dearth of historical context here. 

That is the first thing that must be acknowledged.

When I hear the Asian woman on the subway bench use the term just as flippantly as Caucasian people, it reminds me of what can so often be forgotten when all non-whites speak as a collective voice in the face of racism.  It is that there are racist expressions that are overwhelmingly directed at specific groups, and that while all people of colour have been dehumanized over time, the word monkey has a very long, very ugly and very prolific relationship with those of African descent – a history that is unique to that group.

That is the second thing that must be acknowledged.

Following last week's announcement by the U.S. Treasury Department that Harriet Tubman would become the face of the American $20 bill, I peruse online for public response to the news.  A link comes up and catches my eye.  Clicking on it, I discover the white supremacist website Daily Stormer, and this image.  Read the small print at the bottom.  (In the headline, the term describing Andrew Jackson is meant as praise.)

The truth of racism is always the same.  It does not matter what one has achieved in his or her life.  It means nothing that one is brilliant.  It means nothing that one is bold.  It means nothing that one is brave.  In racist eyes, the only thing that means anything is that you are black, which takes you from human to sub-human.  This de-personification of black people by racists does not begin when blacks are 8, or 14, or 20.  It begins when we are born.  We are "monkeys" from the moment we are born.

I am reminded of the children intended to be the antithesis to this, those conceived through Hitler's Fountain Of Life program, the purpose of which was to create an Aryan "master race".  Its methodology was to incentivize members of the Nazi party to mate solely with blonde-haired, blue-eyed women who would likely produce "superior" blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies.  These children were deemed "racially pure"  -- the perfection of the homo sapien species -- and the residue of that mindset exists in 21st century North America.  I cannot count how many times I have seen photos of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies fawned over to the extreme, far more so than those of other babies, and it has always made me deeply uncomfortable.  Their parents are congratulated as if they have struck a genetic jackpot.  It is not that many of these babies aren't beautiful; they are. But there is something, an often over-the-top almost awestruck reaction, as if those children have somehow won some sort of aesthetic lottery by sheer virtue of being born with those two characteristics.  

As I write, I realize that perhaps there are those legitimately unaware of the history.  I Google “black people compared to or depicted as monkeys”.  This piece contains ten of the images that pop onto my screen.

Look at every one of them.

THIS is the story of “monkey” in the lives of black people.  THIS is what a word that others say without thought has often meant for us for centuries.  Consider the hatred behind each image - actually consider it - and then tell me that to playfully call a black child and a white child “little monkey” holds the same energy.

It is not the same.  It is NOT the same.

That is the third thing that must be acknowledged.

Pursuing true equality means recognizing that not everything can be treated equally.  Those who continue to assert that it is the same, it is moot to argue.  There is a need for that justification somewhere inside of them that I will never decipher.  

The fact that it may feel fine for you or your family to use the term does not make it so. It is not somehow fine because people call your darkly-hued Latino child monkey and your family thinks nothing of it. Those who think nothing of it think nothing of it because that particular connotation of the word is not prevalent within their race.  Because they are not black.  If you lack a similar response to the term it proves one thing – that your race, be it Caucasian, Indigenous, Asian, etc. – is in different relationship to that word than the black race.

That is the fourth thing that must be acknowledged.

A few months ago, I stumble across an article in which a First Nations woman asks people to stop calling others their spirit animals. She says it is the flippant use of a concept that is deeply symbolic in Indigenous culture.  Although it isn't a term I tend to use myself, I file what she says away in my brain. I take note of it solely because I would never – while trying to actually express my love for or connection to someone – use a sacred term the significance of which I do not truly understand and in so doing, unintentionally disrespect an entire group of people.

As my sister and I converse on the night of my Facebook post, we analogize the use of the word monkey to that of the another word – boy.  Like monkey, it has its own sordid story.  I shudder to think that anyone would have difficulty understanding why a white man calling “Come here boy!” to a young youth in Rhode Island is a completely different thing from a white man calling “Come here boy!” to a black youth in Mississippi.  Unless one has absolutely no knowledge of American history, it is utterly disingenuous to present those contexts as the same.   It does not matter if the intent of the white man in Mississippi is innocuous.  What matters is that people must be able to determine the profound difference between the two backdrops, based on the latter carrying a blaring historical echo that the former does not.

Instead of responding as a white person with “Well I would never mean it that way!” or as person of colour “Well I'm non-white, and I use that term all the time!” – here's an idea. 

Don't. 

Rather, take in what has been said and internalize it as best you can from your vantage point, one situated on the outside of the experience that drives the request.  Could it be that the term is not the same 'monkey on your back' as it is on theirs? Ask yourself why your reaction is so different, so uncomplicated, so quick.

If a black person says sincerely “Please don't call our children ________ , ask yourself why your reply would be anything other than "Can I ask why?" (if you honestly don't understand), or "Okay."

Stop and think about what any other response does.

Rather than recognizing, it reduces. It reduces the perceived validity of what the person has said, as if their view of their own race's experience is somehow equivalent to your view of their experience, a view based in an entirely different reality. Realize that you can never view theirs from within. Some will continue to insist that the term shouldn't be a problem if they don't "don't mean it that way”. If my intention is to be loving, they will say, I shouldn't be treated like I'm racist.  Such a response is clueless.  If the very people to whom you wish to be "loving" are those whose requests you fight, reconsider if being loving is your actual intent.

If I mean to be hospitable to you by serving you a hot cup of tea, and I spill the a pot of boiling water in your lap, the skin peeling off your thighs is no less real because I was trying to be nice.

The term monkey as a "playful" means of referring to black children is, for me, that unintentional scalding.  The burns are real.

If you need a reminder as to why, look at each of these photos again.

I don't expect non-black people to stop calling their own children, or their race's children, whichever affectionate names they choose. Nor would I ask them to. I am asking them to stop calling my race's children that. Because it pulls on a scab. If we have come to see why "gay" and "retarded" should not be used in certain contexts, clearly we can understand context in which "monkey" is fraught as well. Have we not as a society reached a place of introspection, where we can see that some things are only acceptable until one is the wiser?  I would like to believe so.  I cannot help but think of one of my favourite quotes, by Maya Angelou.

"I did then what I knew how to do.  Now that I know better, I do better."

Let's.

__________

TT