After the murder of George Floyd, I was sent a quote from Audre Lorde; I did not know much about her until now.  What I thought I knew about a meaningful dialogue about racism barely begins to scratch the surface of the mountain of racism that continues to exist today. 

Audre Lorde’s essay, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, has helped me begin to frame a different perspective on where we are as a nation, what we collectively need to do to begin to dismantle racism and its corrosive impact, and what each of us needs to do as individuals to help with that process. 

You can find Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools essay here, and my thoughts on it are below.

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Audre Lorde’s The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House is an exploration of various facets of identity, including race, gender and sexuality, and the “tools” used to define these aspects of being.  Her essay was written through the context of her experience at a NYU Humanities conference.  Lorde is coming from the perspective of a lesbian Black feminist and her observations apply broadly to all aspects of our human differences.

She begins her essay with commentary on a conference that is supposed to address the role of difference within the lives of American women but instead sees the absence of considerations of race, sexuality, class and age.  She says "What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable."  While this question is phrased in the context of lack of diversity in a Humanities conference, it can be applied to just about every aspect of racism in the United States.

When I hear her question, I think about our nation's "tools" of unceasing 24/7 "infotainment" continuing to fail us, and if it were not for cell phone videos, or tape as in the 1991 beating of Rodney King - how much less the white nation at large would truly know, or perhaps more accurately, how much more the white nation at large would be able to willfully ignore what's in front of our faces.  I think back to Emmitt Till, and how it was the bravery of his mother that drew attention to his death through visual media, not investigative journalism.  MLK had a keen understanding of this as well.  I think about how black men killed are widely described as "unarmed black men" as if by implication somehow the default is "armed black men" (and even if a black man was armed, such as Philando Castile who slowly and clearly spoke to his situation, is assumed to be a threat).  If George Floyd’s murder was not captured on a cellphone camera, would we even be having this conversation?

I think about our educational system writ large as a “tool” to examine American history; Lorde is speaking of her experience at one of the most prestigious universities in the country - accustomed to the absence of input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.  If NYU is a channel for Lorde's commentary, what does that speak of the foundational aspects of K-12 curricula across the country? 

As for the “tool” of policing, this requires its own separate analysis.  What I will say here is that if we are listening, we will hear that police are not safe for many of our American communities - in particular Black Americans and other Peoples of Color; if we are looking, we will see that in fact this is true. 

Once we look, we can find endless “tools” that propagate racism just to name a few:  policies on economics, taxes, housing, infrastructure, environment/climate change and of course our criminal justice system.

What would some new “tools” look like and how might we create them?  Lorde speaks of the concept of going beyond just tolerance to a much deeper relationship of interdependency.  Lorde is telling us that interdependency resides outside of outside of racism and patriarchy - interdependency is the path to strength and power:

"For women, the need to desire and nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered.  It is a real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world.  Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.  Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but to be creative.  This is a difference between the passive and active being."

This is a powerful statement - a declaration of desire and nurturing as not somehow the other, or a lesser - but redemptive.  Passivity of being is an acceptance of the current framework and structures imposed by our racist and patriarchal society.  It is instead interdependency that creates security and power to effect change - our differences are the source of that security and power to shape the future.  Tolerance is not enough:

"Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. … Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged."

Lorde is saying that if we build new tools from a place of interdependency and not just mere tolerance, we become stronger and more powerful.   

Ultimately, white people must take on the task of educating ourselves and understanding interdependency is essential for our survival.  We are seeing the need for it play out in real time in our streets and by police departments' response across the nation.  "Now we hear it is the task of women of Color to educate White women - in the face of tremendous resistance - as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival.  This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought." It is not the job of Black people to educate us whites; we must reach out and understand in our core being the need to achieve this interdependency and move towards a just and equal society, and work hand in hand with people of all backgrounds to eradicate racism.