angry

Witnessing the Killing Fields

| Sheree
Bob Vylan

The political and media furore over chants at Glastonbury by Bob Vylan, a British punk duo has me reeling at the moment. I couldn’t get my head around it at first, why I was feeling such anger at this condemnation of their chant? At first I was thinking it was because this group are black and I felt it was racism again raising its ugly head. But then Kneecap is getting condemnation as well for ‘hate speech’, ‘inciting violence’, an Irish hip-hop trio from Belfast. I’m not saying that the Irish has not experienced their own form of racism, prejudice and discrimination either.

But then when I saw the newspaper headlines, and then the Prime Minister coming out say it was ”appalling hate speech’ wanting an investigation in the BBC and how they could allow this to happen, with criminal investigations being filed against both Bob Vylan and Kneecap, I realised why I was getting angry and really enraged. It was because there was all this disgust and moral hand whinging and condemnation of a chant, but not the same level of condemnation and rage and move to stop it for the genocide happening in Gaza, right now, or for the last 1 year, 8 months, 3 weeks and 4 days. As the Palestinians continue to be exterminated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF), there is no condemnation, not opposition from the UK government, the media, those in business, those who are showing again and again that they are controlled, owned by the Israeli Government and State. Proving that they actually have vested interests in Israel and continuing the genocide.

It is ludicrous to witness, the political and media condemnation of a few words chanted at a music festival while Palestinians waiting in a line for aid, starving people who’ve been herded into this state of the queuing dead, are massacred by IDF. These people dead on their feet, seeking aid, did not pose a threat, and yet the IDF, an armed force just opened fire on them because they could. Because they know, no one is trying to stop them. No one is condemning their actions. The world is turning a blind eye to their war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Anyone opposing their horrendous crimes are called anti-semitic and are cancelled, condemned, silenced.

Bob Vylan, facing a criminal investigation have also been dropped but their record company and are on a travel ban to USA. Swift and sharp punishment for expressing their desire to see a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Mass disgust across the country and further afield about a chant, but where is the mass disgust and action against the mass extermination of a people? The Palestinians, the people of Gaza.

“It’s a Killing Field”, reported by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg within Haaretz, details how IDF soldiers were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. Unarmed people are treated like a hostile force and just shot and killed. Deliberately. Bullets is the IDF form of communication. Not chants, bullets. Where is the condemnation of this? Where is the Parliamentary emergency meeting to discuss this deliberate killing of human life, that is genocide, that are war crimes? None but there is one about Bob Vylan, and Lisa Nandy, British Labour Party politician serving as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2024, standing up in Parliament, in solemn tones criticising the BBC the Glastonbury broadcast and Bob Vylan for the chanting. Claiming her moment in the limelight, making a performance, Nandy condemned the “appalling and unacceptable scenes” at Glastonbury and said the government would not tolerate antisemitism. But the government tolerates genocide. FACT.

I could go on as I’m sick and tired of hearing when someone criticises IDF, and the Israeli state of murdering Palestinians and claiming Gaze, the whole state, from river to sea, that this is being anti-semitic. This is just another tactic used for shutting people up. As when people are criticising the genocide of Palestinians and the stealing of their homeland, they are not saying they hate Jews or the Jewish people. They are saying that the massacre of a people is wrong. The IDF as an armed force is committing genocide. That is what is being condemned, criticised and left to the general public around the world to fight against as the Western countries are doing nothing to stop it.

Conflating these criticisms with Jewish people , calling it anti-semitic is like using a get out of jail free card on repeat. It’s not the same thing. And I would argue that if the chant, ‘death, death to the IDF’, is anti-semitic and hate speech inciting violence, what/who is it killing IDF? A chant, some words at Glastonbury or the Israeli government sending the IDF into war, ordering them to kill unarmed people seeking aid? Tell me which one is a whitewashing of crimes against humanity? The chant is not a chant of hate for Jewish people. The chant is anger at the genocidal actions of a genocidal army, the IDF, who are beginning to ask themselves if this was is just, and what is the humanitarian price the Gazan population paying for this war?

Waiting to be allowed in

| Sheree

This piece was written back in 2020 and published on Medium. I’ve brought it over here to be part of my writing archive. I also feel that the case needed restating frequently. Did I say daily?

We queue with our shopping basket. This is the norm now. But we don’t complain. It keeps everyone safe. We’re at the front of the queue, for a change. My daughter and I. We’ve only come to the one shop. I let her ride her bike into town. She needs the exercise as she’d be happy in front of her screen all day. I probably would too, as at least she’s inside safe, connecting with her friends, and I get a moment to myself.

Front of the queue, but we hold back as the woman in front of us has just gone into the shop. There’s someone coming out at the same time. The store security guard is standing in the mix too. We allow a gap to form between us; the woman and the entrance and our bodies. Coming across from an adjacent shop, a man and woman stride. Stride into the front of the queue, ready to walk into the shop. I raise my voice just above my normal speaking voice to say to them, There’s a queue. We’re waiting to go into the shop too.

I think I’m smiling but how can they know? How can anyone tell if you’re smiling when you’re wearing face protection? By your eyes. I think by the eyes, you can tell if someone is smiling. It’s a warm, sunny day. I’m wearing sunglasses. Maybe they can’t see my eyes. They can only use my voice as means of communication.

Sorry, they say. We thought the queue was going the other way. They walk to join the queue behind us. I say, in a tone of voice which I think says I understand, No, the lady in front of us has just gone in and we’re waiting back here to giving everyone some space.

In the time it takes for the couple to walk and wait behind us, at the recommended 2 metres, the woman of the couple has already started saying in a loud enough voice for us to hear, Some people are just getting angry about the situation now, and there’s s no need for it. We walk into the shop.

Note: The angry Black woman stereotype portrays a black woman as sassy, ill-mannered, and ill-tempered by nature.

Walking back home, Ella walking with her bike, I approach what happened outside the shop, asking Ella if she heard what the woman said about people getting angry.

She was referring to me. I explained. She saw me as an angry Black woman. Do you think I was angry because you’ve seen me angry?

My daughter knows me. She knows I wasn’t angry and says so.

When you live in a society where you’re powerless, perceived as worthless and inferior, those who have power, believing themselves to be superior, spend their time telling others how they handle the situation isn’t right. They tell you that how you speak or act or response isn’t appropriate. You are wrong. They gaslight you, forcing you to doubt yourself; your actions and capabilities. You are at fault, always. You are wrong. You are silenced.

Back home, I talk to my husband, who’s a white man. I think if he’d been with us, the woman behind us, wouldn’t have uttered the angry line. He disagrees. She sounds like a woman who would have gotten annoyed if anyone had checked her behaviour, he said.

He has the right to think and say that. And maybe he’s right. Who knows? But to accept this explanation, I’d have to disallow what I feel about the situation. I’d have to make allowances once again for someone else’s behaviour, reaction and treatment of me. I’ve spent a lifetime of making allowances for other people’s treatment of me. How can I be sure that when they treat me unfairly, or discriminate against me that this isn’t how they treat everyone else? I don’t know. All I have is the way they make me feel. My lived experience as a Black woman.

All I know is that when I’m walking down the street and someone is coming towards me, it’s me who walks into the road to maintain social distancing. It’s me who walks into the gutter to keep us both safe. Would they do the same? I don’t know. I can’t take the risk to wait and find out either.

I’ve been socialised, fed the stereotype of the angry Black woman for so long, I police myself. I play my part. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t protest or question. It’s part of my make-up to check myself so I appear in society as passive and non-confrontational and unseen.

I remember my place.

Really Pissed Off At The Moment

| Sheree
Land’s End, Cornwall

I’ve been missing in action. I’ve been going through the motions of getting up each day and doing what needs to be done. But I’ve been tired. Put it down to the 9 hour drive home Saturday/ Sunday from Cornwall.

So maybe because of this lack of energy, then my skin is thinner. My patience is none existent. Or I’ve just plain sensitive.

But some ways people are behaving and treating me is unacceptable and maddening and upsetting. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not accepting this treatment lying down. I’m pushing back and letting them know what they’re doing or not doing and how this is coming across for me/ affecting me. But that doesn’t lessen the sting. Doesn’t lessen the questioning that seems almost like a ritual I do through afterwards.

Why are they doing that? Why did they say that or not? Why did they not acknowledging my contributions? Why did they not thank me? Are they treating everyone else like that? Did they just do it to me? Are they doing this because I’m Black?

Yes. You might say, it’s not all/always about race. And I agree with you. But if we live in a white supremacy culture where we are indoctrinated into believing, thinking and behaving as if white people are superior to Black people then it’s second nature to dismiss, ignore, overrule, disregard what the Black person is saying or doing in the room. We are not seen as of value, of worth or even present. We don’t register on your radar.

So I won’t ask for forgiveness or apologise for bringing it up because for me these are daily microaggressions which depending on my current state of mind body and soul, cut deep or can be rolled off my back like water.

But this week. Today. Now. No way. I’m not accepting them. I’m not going to remain silent about them. As I’m here and I matter and I deserve to be recognised. Not because I’ve done or said something amazing or impression. Because, I am a human being, and I have a right to be here.

Here ends today’s rant and getting things off my chest as basically I was getting tired carrying them all ant

angtaround.

Fire Woman

| Sheree

The fire which burns outside is still greater, for most of us, than the one that burns within.

Burning Woman, Lucy H. Pearce

There are times when I have so much I want to say but don’t know how. Ideas come and go and those moments of connection, when something clicks and I light up. And then flounder in how to communicate it. How to express what lies within.

There are plenty of times I have something to say but doubts and fears get in the way of expressing them. I long to be more courageous and bold in my expression without fear of percussions or judgements.

I know what I think and feel goes against the grain and to express these things in public would invite the gaze, backlash and cancel culture.

For example, we’ve just had a four day bank holiday, where there were parades and street parties and celebrations for Queen Elizabeth being on the throne for 70 years. But really what is there to celebrate? For me it angers as for these 70 years, people have paid for the royal family upkeep. But more infuriating is that the Queen is a figurehead of colonialism; the subjugation and exploration of Black and brown bodies around the world for centuries. And as a Black person I’m expected to shut up, celebrate this and be grateful.

But to say these things to anyone, I’d be the one with the issue, unpatriotic with a chip on my shoulder as someone recently threw at me when I described a racist incident I’d experienced which was tried to explained away as something else.

Just how it bugs me, when the term ‘women’ is used there is a silent, hidden (white) before it. That the default setting for woman is white and anything else such as Black woman is the ‘other’. To point this out would invite the comment that I always have to play the race card, or not everything is about race? Not that when someone uses (white) woman or (white) women that they do not see me included.

A few years ago, I started reading Burning Woman by Lucy H. Pearce. I felt the rallying cry for women to take back their power. To not hide from or be scared of the fire burning within. “She who dares. She who does what they say cannot be done, must not be done. She who tries and fails. She who does it her way.”

But coming back to it today, the words jar. I identify with the burning passion and rage inside of me that I need to express and enact upon, but I don’t feel my whole being/ experience/ body is contained within this book or within the term ‘woman’. I know that if I dare and do what I want to do, succeed or fail, the repercussion as so much more dangerous, dire for me as a Black woman. Not even acknowledging this within this book, or other books I’m reading excludes my experience as well as makes me feel as if I have the problem, and not that white supremacy culture is the issue.

Reading Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter to reconnect with the place, I’m having to turn part of myself off because there are certain things he says that I could find offensive. Throw away comments about African-America jazz musicians, artist or writers who made their home in Paris are not given their proper respect/ admiration/ regard as fellow human beings. Some points I feel their talent or success is not theirs alone but down to the white people they were befriended by or associated with.

I think what these reading experiences are illustrating for me, except for stoking my internal fires, is how much my lens/ gaze/ perception has been readjusted, changed and re-educated. How I’m no longer duped by white supremacy culture and how I now see behind the veil, the workings and manipulations. I no longer accept them or toil under them in silence.

Yes I feel that fire in my belly, and I’m using it to fuel what I’m doing outside of me. I may still have some fear of being burnt by it, my passion, my voice, my expressions but my greatest fear is remaining silent about the fires burning outside of me which are denied, overlooked or dismissed. And I’m ready to challenge whoever is lighting them and keeping them burning.

Writing my mixmoir on my terms is my way of allowing free rein for all the things I need to express and share in order to not be consumed from within by my fire and rage. The writing process is taking the flames and creating something beautiful and scorching.

Getting Angry

| Sheree

D8EF2770-5D2D-43B1-8D5B-2F94CDD108D4.jpeg

Last night I got angry and I mean really angry. I think I might have scared @hazmatt72.

This was a different anger to any I’ve experienced before. No I tell a lie. I think I might have had a glimmer of this deep visceral anger back in 2014 when I was organising #blacklivesmatter events and I was finding my political voice and going public with my thoughts about race.

And then I was silenced and all that anger turned inward. Turned against myself and how stupid I’d been and the mistakes I made. Anger turned up so high that I almost didn’t hear the whisper of self-compassion, forgiveness and love.

Fast forward to last night, the anger has shifted from focusing on myself to sending fierce fire balls out there.

I recently became a member of @secretmessagesociety ( or am I supposed to keep it a secret?!?) and my first Zine talked about developing a back bone. To start putting myself at the centre of my life and everything/ everyone else out there, outside of me is ‘the other’.

At the mention of ‘the other’ I had a gut reaction. A recoiling. As a black woman in colonial, imperial, patriarchal, hey (wo)man, in any kind of discourse, I ‘m labelled/ perceived/ treated as ‘the other’. And even though I have argued against this, this didn’t stop me internalising it. Taking on the label myself and seeing myself as ‘the other’ in comparison to the white norm.

Coming across ‘the other’ @secretmessagesociety, something shifted and was dislodged to the point that I’ve de-centred my whole belief, operating system. I no longer claim ‘the other’ as me, my label, my positioning out there and within me.
No. I’m right bang centre in my life, in my identity and everything outside of me is ‘the other.’ I’m no longer kept in the margins, the minority, the freak, the fat ugly black bitch, the deformed, the other.
I’m so gloriously centred with me/ within me.

And I’m angry. But a shimmering healthy get things sorted, changed sort of angry. Which always flows from love. #iaintsorry #hellno #fuckem #angryblackwoman #othering #decentre #takingbackwhatsmine #practice #process #patience #self-love #self-care #secretmessagesociety #gettingmesomebackbone