Roots of a Poison Tree

queer community, and the queer community at large. What does it mean to watch as headline after headline goes on the attack on your very sense of being when what you're reading isn't about some other group or some other place, It is about elected officials deciding that you shouldn't exist right and that you should be ashamed of your existence,

or that your very existence should be criminalized. And you know, while this summer has been wild in so many different fucking ways, with a former twice impeached, you know, rapist president being indicted four times on ninety one charges, we have also seen a rise in an uptick in violence against the queer community. We have seen an uptick in racial violence, and it's all stemming from the same poison tree,

the Republican White Supremacist Party. And so what does it mean that when those within the black community align themselves, whether knowingly or unknowingly, with the same talking points in rhetoric that were used to subjugate them against the trans community, against the black transwoman community. So we get into a myriad of conversations about so much in this jam packed

episode with Amara Jones. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to WOKF After God, it feels like a very long time CEO of Translash Media, Amara Jones, and the host of the Webby Award honored Translash podcast and a time one hundred honoree I mean, and documentarian and activist. I mean, the list can go on, Amar, How are you? It has been a really challenging summer. I would say, let me use that word for the black queer community. There have been some really high notes, there have been

some really low notes. So just to start out, how are you doing?

what was happening and how it was unfolding. I feel like I need to take a nap, but I feel like it's not going to not going to happen because I keep getting interrupted by everything that we're all being interrupted by and more. And so I'm just trying to find small ways to get through what is going to

be a very intense next you know, sixteen months. You know, there's not going to be a let up I think for a while, and so I am just trying to get my mind around that and to figure out ways of small ways that I can try to preserve myself in the middle of it, because that's going to be kind of the key and the solution.

that you're reading, it's something that you're living. And so I do want to talk to you first about uh the comedian and I'll put that in air quotes jefs Hilarious, a black sis woman who took it upon herself to engage in a conversation she is not educated for or should be in, about black womanhood and how she feels like it is being quote stolen by black trans women and that she, as a sist black woman, was somehow

making herself the gatekeeper for black womanhood. And I wanted to get to your thoughts and reaction because I got to tell you, I had to walk myself out of those comment sections because the people agreeing with her hateful rhetoric are the very same people who have called this woman outside of her name for her for her own looks and have used right in like, used the idea of masculinity as a way to insult her. And it's just it is a wild circus. It was a wild circus,

so I had to walk myself out of that. But what did you make of this back and forth that we saw?

I think the first way is that just Hilarious is clearly not aware that what she was doing was essentially parroting talking points that were written I'm sorry, the parenting talking points that were written by white supremacist as a part of a campaign to flood the airwaves with anti trans disinformation such to the point that it would seem natural and people would take it upon themselves to repeat those same views, therefore turning themselves into an agent of

white supremacy and patriarchy. So that's one thing that I didn't understand, because what she says is exactly what they say, and they've said it longer than she said it, So that's where it comes from. The Second thing that I felt really sad about is this is a person that doesn't fully understand the way her or other, as she would say, since women's bodies like her function. I mean, there are so many people who lose their periods at a certain age, who have a kid and the periods

don't come back, who have an accident. Are they not women? Like it just doesn't make any sense, Like it literally doesn't make what she was saying, even if you were applying it to the people that she thought that she was talking about, it doesn't make any sense, like it literally is nonsensical. Means you don't understand fundamentally how your own body works or could work. And that made me

really sad. And that's true because we know that that's that's the way that people are have been miseducated about themselves. I think the third way that it was really sad is that she clearly doesn't understand the history of black women in America. Come on, doesn't understand that in America, the entire enterprise to define womanhood was so that black

women's bodies could be exploited. And so if you are getting into this conversation of about what is a woman, not what's who's not a woman, then what you're essentially doing is again extending white supremacists in patriarchal enterprise, and as I said in a post, it doesn't actually matter whose mouth that comes out of and the color of the face attached to that mouth, it's still the exact

same views. And not understanding that this debate over what is a woman and who's a woman, and who can't be a woman and who can be a woman meant that black women did not achieve full womanhood in the United States until nineteen sixty five, until probably just hilarious Mom in her life technically became a woman in America. So you, by doing that is actually stimulating, recreating and extending the very arguments that were rooted in your own impression.

I thought it was really sad, and I said, like, I mean, I really do believe this, and I don't say this lightly. I really do believe that. What struck me is that I was like, Oh, this is a person who's lost, and oh wow, there are a lot of other lost people. You know.

for me, that was you know, I'm looking at this entire conversation, but what really troubled me were what I perceived to be other cis black women that were in the comments, you know, applauding her right for taking some type of stance. And I'm saying, why do we all tend to decide to operate from this place of scarcity, like in order for us to expand and think about the notion of peoplehood and womanhood and ideas around masculinity and why we were indoctrinated in certain ways that that

means that somebody is taking something away from me. I really don't understand that mentality, And you see it play out everywhere. You see it play out with Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump and white grievance, Like for there to be a multiracial democracy, it must mean that you're taking something from me. If I'm a white person in America, and we just see it play out over and over again. Barbie, the movie Barbie comes out and they say, you're taking

masculinity from you know, from men. No, we're having a conversation about toxic masculinity and patriarchy. But it seems like you can't do. For all the advances of mar that we seem to make in conversation right in understanding, we seem to take ten steps back. And I'm wondering how you see us in a time when the policies that are coming out, the anti trans policies that are coming out, the anti LGBTQ policies that are coming out, the anti black policies that are coming out and are being taken

up across the country. What does it look like to really hold and center your own humanity in this moment, Like for us all to continue to hold and center our own humanity when we're watching the advance answers of the last sixty years be rolled back.

So I think that we have to realize that this idea of like hoarding everything right, power, money, resources, humanity is an under is an undercurrent to that predates the founding of what we now call the United States of America. It came with many of the people that came here as settlers, and it is a mindset that we have yet to figure out how to effective counter to. I'm sorry to counter effectively, and so that means that it's still with us and we need to do some deep

diving into all of that. I think the other thing, how do we preserve ourselves in the middle of this.

I think what's amazing is that, like growing up, I got to spend a lot of time with southern rural black people, including my grandparents, and I often think about all of the things that they did to preserve their humanity in circumstances that I can't imagine, you know, ways in which they emphasize community, ways in which they emphasize connecting with their bodies, ways in which they gardened and they farmed, and they worked on their houses and they painted,

and they were artistic and they were creative, and so doing the things with and amongst ourselves that affirm our humanity. Because the public sphere is not where we can do that, right Like, that's not where that happens. And if you're looking for the public spirit to do that, I would urge you to think of something different, because that's going

to be a losing enterprise. You will find your humanity by connecting with other people individuals that affirm your humanity and in ways that are human, in ways that are outside of even the digital realm. I think that right now we are called to find the new old ways of connecting with each other and with ourselves.

let go of that has just been weighing us down. So, whether it is the capitalistic rat race that has us see each other as competition instead of community, whether it's the overloading of our work schedule, because I'm only as valuable as I am as I am productive, right like, it was just these different pieces of recognizing how little by little our humanity had been robbed from us for

the benefit of other people. And so when you say to connect as a way to reimagine or refine or go back to our grandparents and great grandparents ideas of what community looks like, I think that that is absolutely right because in the social sphere alone, social media sphere alone, I mean, my god, the toxicity is just so is so potent, you know, I want to with a few minutes that we have left, I do want to get your thoughts on Trump and his ninety one charges that

he has against him, ninety one four indictments, ninety one charges, the black women who are the ones that have been steadfast in the defense of our democracy and the pursuit of justice that we are seeing play out, and the upcoming Republican And I use that in air quotes because I don't see why we would watch a white supremacist debate, but debate that is happening soon, and what you think

about twenty twenty four. So let's start with Trump, the Republican front runner, and his just myriad, myriad of charges against him.

I think we need to be people need to be more skeptical than they are of where this is headed and what the outcomes are, because it is I was thinking about this the other day. The judicial system has been equipped to deal with people have political power. It is equipped for people who have monetary or corporate power. Is it equipped to deal with people who have both?

I don't know. I don't know. So I think that we just need to be a little bit more skeptical in that and just be a little just be circumspect in ourselves. The other thing that I think about is what happened in Brazil and the two totally different ways that they dealt with their insurrection and we dealt with ours. Immediately after their insurrection, a governor was forced to resign, hundreds of people were put in to jail overnight. Them are still there and they're being processed, and now the

home of their president has been rated, et cetera. And that's, you know, in less than a year after that, we are now coming up on nearly four years later and are just beginning to hold some of the people accountable. That I think again should give everybody pause in a moment of reflection. With regards to the upcoming election. It's going to be I'm not even going to say unprecedented. I think it's just going to be something we haven't seen before. You know, unprecedented means that in the way

that we use it is it's without precedent. But I think that what we are about to see is beyond our imagination, and what we're going to go through next year is something that we can't conceive. And I think that we have to all get ready for that, and we could have a whole show on all the various

scenarios that could play out next year. But I think that we just have to get our minds ready for the fact that it's going to be a say what moment after a say what moment after a say what moment, and I think that for trans people in particular, it's going to be extremely rough. Every single major declared candidate except for Chris Christy has an explicit anti trans platform.

I think Hutchinson, I should say, and William Hurd, but essentially all of the people who could potentially become president, and that means then that gender identity is going to be at the very heart of their electoral strategy, both for themselves and for the country, and I think that that's going to add to a very toxic and dangerous atmosphere for trans people.

is being something that expands and contracts. And so if I get that, then I'm less shocked that things get less safe, right, because I'm like, oh, well, things can get less safe. The second thing that I think about is that again, and safety is provided by the people around you. If you are at a dance event like Soul Summit in New York City or in the apartment building which I live or you live, who guarantees our safety? It is literally the people around us. That's what guarantees

our safety. Right. We saw it in Lahina, you know, it was ours, if not days before anyone saw any authorities be present. So who guarantee their safety? Each other? So I think that we have to fundamentally think about safety as being those people who we are around and where we are around, and how we we create the spaces literally around us that will provide safety.