This is the first time in my life that MY community has been highlighted on national television. I mean…the place I worked. The place I have memories of. The place my body has memories of.
Not just “community” that I count myself a part of.
~has that ever happened to you?
It changes how you see things. Because you see yourself for the first time through the eyes of others. Up close. You can feel their breath on your skin. You can smell their perfume.
And you know what they think of you.
Not abstract you, not “identity you claim” you.
You.
you.
I think the report takes several cheap shots at white people. Goddamn fucking hell, yes, I said it. Did those white people know that you were filming them to critique them? Are white people the only people who eat blueberries?
Those are the white people many many many farm workers in remote and midwestern areas are forced to/chose to live with and by. Often, many of those same small town white folks are the ones that give migrant workers a warm meal and a friendly place to gather (those nasty churches the left dismisses and hates as hick haven? Guess where Mexicans learn to speak English and get their soul comforted?).
It was a cheap shot at those white people (oh sweet goddamn JESUS, I can’t believe I am saying this) to use them as a way to critique a *system* that doesn’t mind sending five year olds to work–AND NEVER HAS (slaves, sharecroppers, miners, sweatshops,…).
Did the reporters think of that at all?
And oh, Jesus, the fingers, the little baby fingers that are supposedly so good at picking blueberries (when any picker who has been in the fields for more than five hours know little bodies are *best* at fetching things, that bigger hands are better because bigger hands can grab the clusters more easily.).
The baby blueberry child fingers.
That are attached to little bodies that forget how to dream through work.
Don’t these people know? Don’t they know?
Work is where you learn to dream. Where the heat stifles you into second by second existence. One more second. One more second. You can make it one more second. Until.
Your mind learns to tell you stories. Entertaining, interesting, romantic, mystical stories. That help you to forget. Help you to bear. Help you.
Second by second.
What language did you ask those children what their dreams were?
You.
They think they know you.
Because they got paid by an institution to work along side you (their bills wouldn’t have been paid otherwise!), they think they know you.
And now people across the world think they know you.
They look at your little girl body and listen to your Spanish accented English and watch your parents turn their backs resolutely to the camera…
And they think they know you.
And they talk about you and decide things about you and use you and images of your body to change their minds and call you names you laugh at (the blueberry children! wtf? you ask in eight year old language)…
They bleed earnestly for you, and identify with you and sit judgment on you and their mouths fall open in shock just looking at you.
And you think…
What’s wrong with *you*?
~has that ever happened to you?
Our fingers are our fingers and you don’t get to decide what they’re being used for. You don’t get to name us. You don’t get to use our bodies and our faces as a way to beat up privileged white people.
You don’t get to identify with us.
Because you don’t know us. Three months with us, seven minutes of us. Does not unfold the knowledge of us.
~us up close through the eyes of others…
has that ever happened to you?
Show.
That is enough.
My world is changed.
- Share
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:09 pm #
Kind of reminds me of the local NPR coverage of labor day. I listened to it on the way to the AFLCIO pancake breakfast. To hear them tell it unionists are either privileged old white guys or quaint historic figures from a bygone era. Man was I relieved to get to the breakfast and see hundreds of real white, black, asian, hispanic and native american male and female trade unionists. When I walked in the speaker was the anti war journalist, Norm Solomon who gave a report on how our tax dollar were being spent in Afghanistan. He got a long, loud ovation. It had nothing to do with the tripe I’d just heard on the radio.
November 2nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm #
It happened to me. I got to be a “refugee” at the Convention Center. I was having as much fun as you are now.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 am #
I hope you sent this essay to the offending network. It’s a viewpoint they need to hear, probably more than a few times.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:35 am #
Every time Detroit is in the news. Every time one of my white suburban teachers talked about that terrible, dirty city but gave me a look of “Oh not you, Shelby! We don’t mean you!”
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:45 am #
Not identical — we’re from different communities, and the issues are different. But similar.
Every time they find torture in institutions, and try to fight for pointless regulations that won’t even stop the obvious torture, let alone the day-in day-out degradation and dehumanization that changes and smashes and wounds you inside worse than any physical torture ever could. Reading the detached and clinical reports, and the news reports, about institutions that I was in, some of which I was in at the time the reports were being made. Remembering what the real issues were and that nobody who writes the things ever gives a damn about them, or about those of us who lived there, or about anything other than us as a symbol of mute helplessness and things that happened to us that we accepted more than we accepted the worst things. It fills me with feelings so powerful I can’t even name them. And I cry. Or I pound things. Or I just lie there immobilized by the feelings. And I never know how to explain it to anyone, even though I try my damnedest all the time because I know with my whole being that this is what matters. (And yet know that many will discount me because I’m the sort of person who ends up in those places, after all. Not reliable. Not real.)
November 4th, 2009 at 12:21 am #
Hey Let me try this again? I am sorry I am so sleepy and I came to your page tonight specifically to get a dose of passionate, between the spaces and lines writing. So i watched the video first. My immediate thoughts were, Oh great. So now these little kids are being made to seem like victims, perhaps more “victim” than they themselves feel. So now this will only make it harder for them and their families, as if spending droolingly boring hours in a us school is as rewarding as working side by side with your parents and learning in the fields?
And so they are incriminating white people here for eating blueberries? but really they are just attacking the reality that the “illegal immigrants” they love to hate have children by pretending to feel sorry for their lost “childhood.” Please help me understand a bit better, and delete my last comments. This one seems a lot more lucid. I love your writing! I love how you look and look and look.
November 5th, 2009 at 4:54 pm #
yes. yes. yes. but the thing is, people *think* they care–they cry and bleed for the poor little babies that have to work all the time–but they never soften themselves up enough to wonder what those poor babies want. they use that crying and bleeding as way to prove to themselves that they are human. It is THEY who are centered in the story–just like it was your dad who was centered.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:02 pm #
SO SO SO SO important and true. Part of what made me sick watching that special is that all the “experts” about these people were white. students. doctors. specialists. Not one interview with former or current migrant adult migrant workers that are organizing unions or working to install bathrooms in the fields.
I’ve been writing about the blueberry fields and farmworking in michigan for years. from the perspective of a 10-13 year old. and I am humble enough to know basic research isn’t going to find my work–but I am realistic enough to know that I am not the only former/current migrant worker talking about the michigan feilds. If I am doing it, you know there is somebody else, I am not the only one.
but I am not listened to–other workers are not listened to. the kids are only listened to as *evidence* to prove the earnest and caring white activist point.
and what is the point? that young children are picking blueberries? Or that the U.S. is a place where child labor is currently and historically part and parcel with it’s existence?
And i understand what you mean about not being a part of my community–I get you. And I think the beautiful thing is that for us to understand each other and realize what is going on and what needs to happen–you and I don’t *need* to be a part of the same community. Community is not the point. Understanding and empathizing and claiming identities is not the point. finding practical ways for you and i to gather on the same protest line in the name of different and similar things…that is what is important.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:09 pm #
yes. yes. yes. but the thing is, people *think* they care–they cry and bleed for the poor little babies that have to work all the time–but they never soften themselves up enough to wonder what those poor babies want. they use that crying and bleeding as way to prove to themselves that they are human. It is THEY who are centered in the story–just like it was your dad who was centered.
Yes.
I know it’s not your job to educate me, but if you could find the time/energy to answer this:
What did you want when you were a child in the fields?
November 5th, 2009 at 5:21 pm #
sanabituranima…this is the first time in my life anybody has ever asked me.. ever. my parents never asked. my friends. my coworkers. all the years i’ve written about it. nobody has ever asked. I’m not sure I know how to answer without sobbing.
November 5th, 2009 at 6:25 pm #
*hugs*
Yeah. That is the really sad thing. Nobody fucking asked.