Why I write, Why now, and Why 'BlakBlan'...

Please consider this piece an introduction to my Substack and therefor, also, an introduction to me, my writing and why I write.

You will find a variety of genres on my Substack in the future - poetry, reflections, essays, sermons, fiction - on a variety of topics - including motherhood, dreams, history, current events, society, arts & music, antiracist education and more. But in my current season and in the longer arc of my life, I am drawn to collective liberation, dismantling white supremacy, and their connection to embodied healing and spirituality/religion. In response to these latter topics, I’ve written this essay to answer the questions Why write? Why now? And why BlakBlan?? That’s a lot of whys, and more than I started out with when Spirit moved me to see this day as the one for me to (finally) launch my writing platform. So, in the hopes of answering all these whys before my deadline hits, yet knowing there’s always other days - and other essays - for unanswered whys, and in the spirit of ‘progress not perfection’, and accepting up front that I will likely walk away from this essay thinking of all the ways I could have made it better with more time and attention, I’ll start with an overarching ‘why’ of all the work I do, and then move on to ‘why BlakBlan?’ 

The big ‘why?’

As the blood mother of my two sons, Bernard ‘Che’ Djom and Amar K. Djom, who also happen to be Black/biracial, and teacher/advisor to many beloved students - past & present - I aspire to aligning my spirit and work with bringing about the world we all need and deserve, both for all of us and for our descendants long after we are gone. Likewise, in the spirit of Sankofa¹ and the Phoenix, I am inspired to do my part to resurrect the best aspects of the world our shared, ancient Afrikan ancestors enjoyed, and to which the various Indigenous (including European) branches of our human tree hearkened back and remained faithful before those earth-centered, matriarchal traditions and ways of being were forgotten or violently taken away from them. 

Okay okay okay… so maybe you’re already overwhelmed, and we’re only barely 3 paragraphs in with many more to go, thinking I don’t know what Sankofa is… I don’t get *what* she is talking about… and this is kinda’ deep! Phew I needa break. If that’s you, no worries, go ahead and take a break. (Breathing break, smoke break, whatever’s in your practice - and age-appropriate! Though we all know what the healthier choice is ;-)) And I promise if you keep reading, more will become clear, especially when I explain ‘why BlakBlan?’ ;-)

Why BlakBlan?

As for ‘why BlakBlan’, a friend anointed me with that name (more on that later) and I am so grateful for what it conveys to me: an affirmation that I have begun important healing work. Because the personal is political and vice versa, and deeper than that in original Afrikan philosophy/psychology ‘I am because you are’, BlakBlan also signifies my deep sense of Purpose, and is why I have chosen this name for my writing platform: I hope through my writing platform to center antiracist remembering and re-membering - deep personal-and-political healing. I hope to be a resource to others, whether those who have forgotten but have tired of the ‘dirty pain’² of pushing memory away, or those who are waiting - sometimes patiently, sometimes filled with anguish and despair - for others to remember and re-member.   

To go a little deeper into understanding BlakBlan, if you know me know me, you know that I am devoted to collective liberation, to antiracist education & organizing, and somehow all of that connects for me personally to Ayiti³ and, before that, to Afrika⁴ For those who don’t know me, you’ll have to wait for a future writing piece to learn about how I came to love Ayiti  soooo much - the nation, the culture, the music, the dance, Vodou, the history, the people - and how those aspects have informed my deepest understandings of white supremacy and, conversely, collective liberation, as well as my deepest convictions to dismantle the former in pursuit of the latter. But for now, a brief socio-historical overview of the history of Ayiti: 

Following Columbus’ violent invasions and occupations of the island’s original Taíno inhabitants in the 1490’s, France eventually colonized the western portion of the island, turning it into the world’s most profitable sugar cane colony in its heyday. These profits came at the cost of the lives of kidnapped and enslaved Afrikans brought to the island from many different areas on the Western and Central coast of the Afrikan continent. Slavery under the French was so brutal and deadly in the colony that most enslaved died by the ages of 35-40 - or within 5 years of being transported to the island from Afrika. As a result, while some enslaved Afrikans managed to survive and parent children in the colony, France was constantly bringing free-born enslaved Afrikans directly from the continent of Afrika. This contributed to strong retention of Afrikan traditions and spirituality among the forming Ayisyen culture, as well as constant uprisings against French colonization and slavery, and powerful maroon communities in the mountains who were forced into years of living, birthing, raising babies and children in caves in order to avoid the torturesome reach of the French kolon. 

The August 14, 1791 Vodou ceremony at Bò kay Iman⁵ and 5-day war counsel that followed marked a pivotal turning point in what many Haitian scholars now consider a revolution that stretched back decades - if not centuries - but is considered in the dominant (if still neglected) historical narrative to be the start of the Haitian Revolution. 

By 1804, Ayisyen had won independence from France, and in so doing had defeated not only the army of Napoleon - considered one of the greatest military leaders in history - but also the Spanish and the British, all of whom could not stand to see an independent Black empire - Ayiti - at a time when they, along with the USA, derived the majority of their wealth from colonization and chattel enslavement of Black people in their nations and colonies. The leaders of the slaver-nations were right to fear Ayiti for a number of reasons, including that the example of the revolution would inevitably inspire uprisings against slavery and more throughout the Americas.⁶ 

But it didn’t just start with Ayiti. Long before the Haitian Revolution marked the complicated independence that has followed for Ayiti, there were near constant uprisings, rebellions and resistance to slavery and colonization throughout the Americas, including during the second phase of Bacon’s Rebellion in the colony of Virginia in the late 1670’s -- less than 60 years after the first enslaved Afrikans were brought to Jamestown in 1619. 

What is remarkable about Bacon’s Rebellion is that enslaved Afrikans and indentured Europeans rise up together against the master-slaver class which, as the billionaire business class today, was closely linked with the governing class. Perhaps you noticed in the paragraphs above about the Haitian Revolution the shift in my reference points from ‘Afrikan’ to ‘Black’, and that both brings us closer to the answer of ‘why BlakBlan?’, and connects to this second phase of Bacon’s Rebellion. 

As Jacqueline Battalora describes in her “Birth of a White Nation” lecture,  the King of England and governors of Virginia dealt with this threat to the economic status quo by dividing and conquering the rebellious working class into two, new, legally inscribed categories: ‘white’ and ‘Black.’ I won’t take time here to go into detail about how that ended up, but suffice it to say: the divide and conquer strategy has been wildly successful here in the former Thirteen Colonies-turned-USA, both concretizing a racialized caste system⁷, perpetuating one of the world’s richest yet most inequitable economies - at the expense of the best interests of the majority of all racialized groups, including the majority of white people⁸ - and obscuring for so many of us the reality that another world is possible.⁹ 

In the early days of the Ayiti empire, revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines articulated a vision of a world free of the colonizer construct of race. The 1805 Constitution declared all Ayisyen, regardless of skin color, to be Black. 

As Dr. Wade Nobles explains in his treatise on Black/Afrikan psychology & spirituality with a case study focus on Ayiti in his book The Island of Memes: Haiti's Unfinished Revolution, the revolution is - as the title suggests - unfinished. According to Nobles, this is because some of the leaders, including Dessalines - and subsequent leaders up until present day - retained traces of the colonizer’s worldview which had for so long been violently imposed on them. I would argue that the same is true for all of us - particularly those of us of European descent who not only suffer the consequences of a colonized epistemology, but have suffered so thoroughly that many of us have forgotten that there was another way, and another ‘us’ prior to the pogroms, witchhunts, land enclosures, Inquisition, and the colonization of Europe under the Romans, the Roman Catholic Church, and the eventual rise of the nation-state system so many of us now take for granted. 

And while a longer treatment of Dessalines’ reasoning is warranted to fully unpack his decree, anyone who subscribes to the long-standing scientific theory that all of humanity originated in Afrika and is familiar with humanity’s timeline should also logically understand that the vast majority of ancestors of every single human being on earth were Afrikan -- or ‘Black’. How do we heal from layers of colonization of the mind, body and spirit which have divided us against ourselves and others? Remembering our shared Afrikan/’Black’ roots is a start. 

Perhaps you’re thinking a) this is fascinating! I can’t wait to learn more!, or maybe b) I know all this already -- explain more about ‘BlakBlan’ already! We’re almost there!

Ten years (or more?) ago, Alico Dessalines - a Haitian friend who happens also to be a descendant of Jean-Jacques Dessalines - playfully graced me with the nickname ‘BlakBlan’. Translated word-for-word, it means ‘BlackWhite’ or - as Alico intended it - a Black person who is white. I consider this nickname an honor, even though I also grant importance - and responsibility - to my identity as a person of predominantly European recent ancestry, i.e. a white person. But I love ‘BlakBlan’ because it is a reminder that the ancestral roots that connect all of us - and our humanity - are Afrikan, and that phenotypic (physical) differences amongst the world’s diverse populations are a relatively new phenomenon in the long arc of human existence. When I spoke to Alico to make sure it was okay to name him in this writing, he summarized the deeper meaning of ‘BlakBlan’ simply: nou se youn. In other words, Black, white, and the vast numbers of those in the world who fit into neither of those limiting categories: we are one. 

The forgetting - and denial - of these shared Afrikan roots are part and parcel of the white supremacy that has worked so well at dividing us, and if we are to heal the vast harm wrought by white supremacy, those of us who are ‘white’ must attend to this loss of memory - and the many other losses we’ve sustained along the way. Part of being ‘BlakBlan’ is that I have learned from listening to Black and Indigenous elders that we do not need to be limited by the either/or thinking of dominant epistemology -- or what Tema Okun and others have described in their work on white supremacy culture values; multiple seemingly contradictory things can be true at once. For example: I am white; like all of us - I am also the descendant of thousands, if not millions, of ancient Afrikan ancestors; I am imperfect, make mistakes, and do my best to reflect so I can do better; and I am BlakBlan. 

Listening to and learning from Black and Indigenous elders and communities, and ultimately from Vodou, has also given me ‘new eyes’ which enable me to re-view my own recent (relatively speaking) ancestral history, and has granted me a far better understanding of myself - and our shared history - by leading me to ask better questions: If ‘white is right’ and Europe was so superior, why did so many of our ‘white’ ancestors leave Europe to become indentured servants in unknown lands, or subsequently in the many waves of migration out of Europe? What happened in Europe to drive people out, or to cause so many of us to forget our common human/Afrikan roots? Spoiler alert: this essay is already waaaay too long, so you need to subscribe if you’re curious about answers to these questions ;-) 

Many of those same elders did not only teach me things. They listened too, and they answered questions when I asked them, like what should I dooooo? As in, what should I do about all this mess we inherited. One answer I heard many times: build community with people who look like you. It’s taken me a loooong time and a lot of (ongoing) personal healing [story for another day], but that’s what I try my best to do now. 

Bottom line: We all need to build antiracist community, living into the reality that the personal and political go hand-in-hand - and both demand healing. The world is not Black-and-white, and if we want to escape from the narrow boxes into which white supremacy seeks to confine us, and the complex nature of our identities and ancestry which it obscures - let alone if we want to repair centuries of damage caused by it - we need to start by remembering and re-membering who we are. 

Why write? and Why now?

The ‘why’ of my writing has more to do with (finally) making my writing widely available, rather than basically keeping it to myself and a few loved ones. Writing has always been a part of my life: my earliest writing memory is of a short story I penned ( or crayoned or penciled, more likely;-) ) during the brief Short Hills year between moving from Tokyo, Japan to Maplewood, NJ when I was in the 1st grade. The story was about a Monarch butterfly and a tiger - seemingly so different, yet deeply connected, as symbolized by their orange and black colorings - who find joyful love with one another, in spite of being shunned¹⁰ by those who cannot comprehend their bond. 

Much of my writing between middle school and now has featured contemplation of historical and contemporary injustice - particularly rooted in what the late bell hooks referred to as the interlocking systems of oppression of the imperialist-white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. But I entered 2023 focused on ‘Healing’ as a key concept and guiding force in my life. I decided to double-down on prioritizing my own healing and participation in embodied healing¹¹ communities; to continue building my capacity and skills to hold embodied healing space for others; to center the process, goal and outcome of healing in antiracist work and writings. 

Several weeks ago in Boston, I witnessed a fateful event of violence - itself rooted in avoidable chaos caused by centuries of un-repaired harm produced by chattel slavery and the subsequent state-sanctioned marginalization of people of Afrikan descent in this country. That event brought the dire need for reparations once again to the forefront of my mind, and moved me to raise the topic of reparations in a number of spiritually-rooted spaces, many of which are connected to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville (UUCC). 

Finally, at a lecture at the University of Virginia last week, Bryan Stevenson reminded us that reparations are not a punishment, but a pathway forward to deep and necessary healing for all. He cited justifications for reparations both in American (USA) law - in which damages and restitution are important, central themes - and in the Bible of his own Christian faith.  Bryan Stevenson’s words reverberated through me in the wake of his lecture and these weeks leading up to Easter. Then, in UUCC’s Rev. Tim Temerson’s class on the Howard Thurman, Christian mystic and minister to Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, induced me to read Jesus and the Disinherited -- Thurman’s reflections on the historical Jesus of Nazareth who ministered to his Palestinian Jewish peers. Like Jesus, they lived under the cloud of Roman colonization. Thurman argued that Jesus did not exhort them to ignore their suffering in await of heaven, but rather offered them - and subsequent generations of the world’s ‘disinherited’ and oppressed - an alternative form of resistance: maintaining control over one’s mind, thinking and spirit, in spite of the oppressors’ unceasing attempts to manipulate it. 

So here we are in the midst of Pesach/Passover for those of the Jewish faith, Holy Week for Christians, and Ramadan for Muslims, while in many of the faith traditions that predate the Abrahamic religions - Vodouiyzan, practitioners of other Afrikan Traditional Religions (ATRs) and Indigenous spiritual systems, pagans, to name a few - are marking in a variety of ways the Spring Equinox and all it promises of fruition, abundance, rebirth and new life. 

My half-finished Substack nagged away at me on my To-Do List for over a month. Finally, this past Sunday, at another event regarding Stevenson’s and Equal Justice Initiative’s work, it hit me: this powerful convergence of religious and spiritual holy days this week was the right time for me to (finally) ‘pull the trigger’, to quote Baba Marcus Akinlana, on releasing my writing to the world. And I realized that today - a Wednesday, no less, at the beginning of a Full Moon cycle - was the perfect day for writing. So here I sit typing, listening to songs for the powerful Haitian lwa, Ogou Feray - warrior for justice - and contemplating these contrasting yet complementary truths: that France’s brutal colonization of Ayiti and unthinkably violent enslavement of Ayisyen as chattel provoked history’s most powerful coup against white supremacy and proto-capitalist colonization: the bloody, if spiritually sanctioned, Haitian Revolution, and; that sometimes, as the axiom says, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” 

When I spoke to my Mom yesterday to ask her blessing for the launch of this project and to consult, as I tried to do with all the elders I consider to be my advisors, she asked me who I am writing for: who is my audience? 

• For some of you, the Abrahamic holidays which we are in the midst of hold great meaning for you. Some of those of you are perhaps working hard for healing, justice and/or reparations in your faith communities, while some of you perhaps have yet to consider these topics - and/or your obligations as a faithful believer to reckon with the historical and contemporary harm and oppression wrought by the religious institutions of which you are a part.

• For some of you, perhaps contemplation of the latter &/or personal harm which you &/or or your ancestors have sustained at the hand of these religious institutions &/or the governments, militaries and tyrants with whom they have collaborated, means that you have rejected the Abrahamic religions - or other text-based, rather than ancestral-based, world religions, such as Hinduism, etc - which your parents accepted, and have sought peace in other spiritual/religious traditions, or in none at all. 

• For fewer of you, perhaps your ancestors managed - against all odds and many forms of oppression - to sustain the ancestral practices of your bloodlines, and you bare the weight of marching on.

• For all of you, I hope, there is a shared desire not only to learn from the world that surrounds us - including here in this space - but also to learn from what Thurman describes as “the sound of the genuine in yourself [which] is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will, all your life, spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

Passion Planner offers a weekly quote for reflection; this week’s quote is: “WHAT YOU ALLOW IS WHAT WILL CONTINUE. Take a moment to consider how much importance you give to your values and principles. Are your actions in alignment with your values? When we act in accordance to our values, we are able to live more authentically.” Juxtaposed with the topic of reparations, this evokes the famous paraphrase of Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver: if you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem. If we aren’t repairing, healing, making justice, then what are we doing? Furthermore, what we allow to continue - or not - also shapes what is to come. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote - and the blood-filled path of the Haitian Revolution - come to mind: “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

I’ve written (more than) enough. Please consider this an invitation both to reflect on this quote and all I have written, as well as an invitation into dialogue during this time of holy observance and beyond. I believe my stance thus far is clear, and I want to hear from - and write for - those who are right there with me, and for those who aren’t there yet. As with any worthy educator, I hope also to learn from you. If you would like me to write addressing questions or reservations you have about the topics I’ve raised - or if you just ‘got it’ like that, and would like to support the ongoing work and commitments of this mother-writer-doula-educator-scholar-healer-activist-manbo to the various healing communities of which I am proud to be a member - please consider signing up for a paid subscription or as a Founding Member.

CONCLUSION & THANK YOUs

So! Beloved readers, If you’ve made it this far, it’s because you signed up for my Substack list and read this piece. (You get extra credit because this piece was loooong! Not everything I share will be so lengthy ;-) ) Welcome to this community, and thank you from deep within for joining it. It’s an honor to write and to be read, and I hope that reading my writings will be as healing for you as writing them has been for me. 

In addition to thanking my Ancestors, particularly those who - like the Monarch butterfly and tiger in my 1st grade story - had the courage to love across difference, and to do what was right when doing what was wrong would have been far easier in the moment, I would also like to thank the various elders not already referenced who have nurtured me in my own antiracist healing & justice journey. Although I have yet to meet them in person, because I have learned so much from them and am regularly inspired by them, first on the list are the brilliant, inspiring and courageous Dr. Greg Carr and Prof Karen Hunter, co-founders of In Class With Carr - a weekly news round-up from a Africana perspective - and Knarrative - the world's largest Africana online learning community. There are too many others to name here, but the following are those whom I spoke to or reached out to for blessings and advice for the launching of this Substack: 

• Harold Adams, our beloved chosen elder, who reminded me of Malcolm X’s quote - “you can’t have capitalism without racism” - when I called him, highlighting the fact that X identified the economic and political system of global capitalism as the underlying basis of racial oppression and argued for international - rather than simply domestic - political struggle. While we have yet to tackle the international scene, I am proud that my sons and I are a part of an intergenerational organization, Inside the Sun, sparked by Harold’s inspiration and dedication to formerly incarcerated people and to building the world we all deserve. 

• Michele Leonard ‘77, co-founder & former Executive Coordinator of the Wellesley Racial Justice Initiative (WRJI), for both believing in me ever since we first crossed paths 5+ years ago at a Wellesley College reunion event, and for sharing so much valuable wisdom and guidance with me over the years.

• Sherry Zitter ‘77, co-founder & current board member of WRJI, one of several lovely and dedicated co-facilitators of WRJI’s White Alum Antiracism Training (WAAT), and my ‘antiracist fairy godmother.’

• Dr. Carey Dardompre, my big-brother-from-another-mother, and president & founder of Center For Cultural Research And Continuing Education of Cap-Haitian (CrefCap), who opined animatedly on the legacy of Dessalines’ proclamation regarding all those who set foot in Ayiti being Black. 

• Baba Marcus Ṣàngódoyin Akinlana, amazing artist, musician, educator and Olòrìṣà Ṣàngó, who recently gave me a verbal shake-down/reminder about how my own boundaries and healing related to my duties, reminded me to listen to my ori, and called me ‘a genius’ -- for all of which I am so, so grateful.

• Manmi Maude, spiritual mother of Sosyete Nago, and Leslie Salmon Jones, of Afro Flow Yoga, both of whom found time to send their blessings in spite of schedules full with their many responsibilities and obligations as matriarchs of their respective communities, and who have done so much to shape my spirit, understanding and healing.

• And my mother, Rev. Dr. Barbara Shaw Jenkins, whose embodiment of embracing strangers as un-met friends, rejection of fear-driven dominant narratives and ways of thinking & being, and shared openness with my father towards other cultures and traditions have been an immense blessing on my complicated journey.  

And thank you to my father who, on the eve of this writing, during the half the day we spent together, managed to share one of his Marlboros with me, indulge me in a walk through a nearby tree cemetery (look out for a writing & pics on this at some point soon), somehow chop up a fallen tree in our yard without an ax, and give me a ride to work, yet didn’t ask any questions about my Substack or my writing ><. But I gotta give him a shout-out nonetheless: for teaching me to ask ‘why?’ and to question the powers that be; for sacrificing so much, along with my mother, to offer me an excellent education, in all senses of the word; for re-orienting (read: chastising) me to widen my lens at a time when my racial analysis was tragically ‘black-and-white’ to include frameworks and histories from the vast world beyond Afrika, Europe, and the Americas, and pointing out the irony of my neglect of that wider world given how profoundly he was shaped by growing up and later returning in his adult life to Japan, where he met my mother, and two of their children - including me - were born and spent our early childhoods. Japan: a place I long to visit, and whose influence on me I’ve come to appreciate increasingly with age. Anyway, I look forward to the day when my Dad does initiate a conversation with me about my Substack or my writing >< And in the meantime, even though he didn’t, he’s still managed to get the ‘last word’ in my first piece here.  

May our healing be a powerful force for justice. 

Amen Ayibobo Axe Awoche Nago  

❤🙏🏿🙏🏾🙏🏼🙏🏽🙏🏿❤

CITATIONS¹²

1. First of all, I’m not gonna try to make a practice of footnotes. (And yet, here I am: 2nd paragraph -- already using footnotes! Bare with me ;-)) Learn more about Sankofa and other Adinkra symbols at https://www.adinkrasymbols.org/symbols/sankofa/, which explains Sankofa as ‘ “Go back and get it.” As the Akan proverb goes, “Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenkyiri.” ‘

2. To learn more about ‘dirty pain’, read Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands; shout-out to Boston Teachers Union Ethnic Studies Now! for exposing educators to this concept and for all they do!

3. Ayiti is the kreyòl (Haitian Creole) name for Haiti, derived from the island’s original Taíno inhabitants.

4. Haki R. Madhubuti’s “Four Reasons for Using 'K' in Afrika" helped solidify my preference for spelling Afrika this way. Shout-out to colleagues at Boston Arts Academy for crafting an amazing Afrocentric curriculum which included this article, and for sharing it with me when I was teaching there in the mid-2010’s.

5. Among other scholars, Èzili Dantò of HLLN, #FreeHaiti believes the more common transcriptions Bois Caiman and Bwa Kayiman are incorrect, and fail to honor the manbo Iman or Iman who, along with Boukman, presided over the fated Vodou ceremony that took place there and ultimately spiritually fueled the initial success of the Haitian Revolution.

6. It most definitely did, both because Ayisyen went out of their way to sew the seeds of liberty throughout the Americas, for example, aiding Simon Bolivar in the first waves of liberation from colonization in South America, and likely also inspiring the largest rebellions against slavery and colonization, respectively, on this land: the 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana, and the  1812 Pan-Indian movement in the Ohio Valley led by Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh against the occupying USA government.

7.  as described in Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

8.  Read The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Propser Together By Heather McGhee to learn more about this

9.  Read Arundhati Roy’s Another World Is Not Only Possible, She Is on Her Way

10.  This is my grown-up paraphrase; ‘shunned’ definitely wasn’t part of my 1st grade vocabulary!

11.  Read Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands to learn more about this or, as Menakem refers to it, ‘somatic abolitionism’

12. I ran out of time, but promise to include these instead of or in addition to hyperlinks &/or footnotes next time!! => Let me know which you prefer!!