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Resent / Dissent By Tash Nikol Smith
The next few pages of poetry, prose and thought experiments are a journey through resentment and into love, understanding and dissent against the weight of the world—hate, disregard, judgement, and the imperialist powers that have plagued and confused us for far too long. Find your heart first, then share it with the world. I love you!
Thank you to my friends, family, community, muses, inspirations and contributors: I’m so grateful for the contributions to support this project coming together, and I also want to recognize the people who keep me going each day. Those who have inspired me most recently, and many for a long time. These are the people that push me to be better, read more, write more, think more critically and love myself better everyday. I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to share time with you in this lifetime. My love KW
Deshawn/DVibes
Bianca
Indi
Rich
Chilly-O
Ace + Mac
Sean F
Solo
Tia F
Anita
Fred
Nicole Edmonds (illustrations)
Rigoberto
Snakemoons April
Brown Recluse Distro Bromstad Printing
Freda
School for Poetic Computation (SFPC)
Victoria C
Tracy S
Eva
mBtheLight
Rona
Russell S
Mariam A
GG this is for you <3
Nora K MOMUS
This is what I always wanted to tell you I’m writing to you because It seems to be the only way to hear this.
like the rain sounds better than it feels in the south it falls so cold but upon deaf ears the clearest sonic resonate through remember when i asked you about love. why you don’t say it?
scared eyes so unsure of any context from you i think you responded with a use. that actions speak louder than words and that’s why it has hurt so much. we forgot actions.
are emotions actions we forgot to show ? You showed me not, too.
how to long with hesitance. and to hold tight on edge.
i waited until i gave couldn’t. the feeling filling me up.
it ached for a while. until i went numb and somehow
now im finding ways back to you.
through you, but for me and what’s left on my remaining dissent.
Images by: Tash Nikol & Jasmine Amussen
It seems like just yesterday I arrived in the big city although I’m back now I really was there and the brown doves were there with me isn’t it crazy to think that my sisters from the south ended up in my living room the parkway was always alive and we found most memories in taking our food waste to the park on saturdays where there were trees And we thrived on all sides we proclaimed a sisterhood but it wasn’t all a hassle or maybe it was heavy and we rushed with our bags hoping that nothing spilled
Once doves lived on the parkway words by Tash Nikol
but maybe if i waited longer we’d still be there laughing and crying in quarantine about how to survive the plague that we were already prepared for cause we always were we never lived like it wasn’t already there
To Love in Fear
YOU YOU VISI VISI in the The days a breeze when we visited the bayou. We walked with no direction through the streets following the scent of wind and water. The clouds were Beautiful and pronounced, swift in pace The sky so vibrant the air dense and foul. Racing through the quarter tripping on Cobblestone and laughing at the The old rich betsys and bens Dining on the sidewalk. Never taking it all in, or Stopping for too long. We caught a chills at St. Louis Cathedral and hurried right by We couldn’t stay too long. The brisk winds kept us along And a hand at my back but I couldn’t take it in too long, Like the hand on my shoulder We had to let it go, cause when i looked no one was there Although I still felt her imprint Sometime ago But we stopped to take a breath To let the air wrap around our necks A little more.
ITED ITED ME ME bayou
ROOT, SPIRIT
Featuring Photos by Kristan Woolford & Tash Nikol Louisiana, 2021 from the platation, to the farm, the plant and the streets of Baton Rouge, Plaquemine Kentwood, and NOLA
Tally-ho Plantation
I AM MADE FROM A PLACE OF PEACE, SOUL, & RESISTANCE
Flowers created by Nicole Jane Edmonds
The Pink Vibration that lives on within me I The world was so calm with you in it. Sweet things happened. Like caramel apples near the checkout line, And sundays in the congregation Sleep on your shoulder. My favorite memory with you was after school. We’d come home to your smiling face. In the kitchen I’d set up the chairs and dance to ballroom music and the ballet. I took lessons back then. Things were more pink when you were here. Like the bleeding hearts near our driveway and that real size patio. The one that we could all sit out on and look out at the streets where my friends lived. There’s less kindness now that you're gone. A missing soft spirit—from a soft yet stoic stone face.
They alway thought we were mean until knowing beyond just a face. We laughed about that together once. The “resting bitch” I told you once of how they spoke to me. You, “oooo girl, now!” knowing it was far from the truth. We had the best Secrets—we still do. There’s no place like this place, With you in it. Time felt softer. Never a weight to hard to carry. Times like when I learned to drive. I’d pick you up from working at the nearby grocery store I’ve never felt such gratitude.
The world sucked after you left. We got an orange president. I always laugh thinking about Your soft heart and your warm concerns. Would you make it here now? Did you already know times like this were coming? Is that why I’m here and you’re there. III Is the route to you the same one you took. And was it somehow a Choice. I can wait out that fate or take my own ride to meet you If that’s how they say it’s supposed to go. Or maybe I can channel through vibrations left If matter works that way.
.And if your bright spirit That touched me left it’s mark on we. I mean the Universe is lucky, and I’ll channel that. The last time I left you it was pink. I closed my eyes as my shamain waved their Hands over my aura and you came to me in waves I’ve never cried so hard or dreamed so wild. But you came to me in pink And I’ll always keep your rose With me. In the spring I notice there are less pink roses in bloom. Did you take them with you too? If I grow them will I get back to you? words by Tash Nikol
SURV ‘WHEN
I
THINK
O F M Y RO L E A N D PL ACE
IN
THIS
WORLD, I THINK OF THE CONSTANT F I G H T O R F L I G H T, CONSTANTLY BEING AWA R E A N D O N EDGE… .’ Image: Ja’Tovia Gary: THE GIVERNY SUITE (2019) Paula Cooper Galler y, New York, NY, USA
VIVAL “WHILE TRYING TO HOLD A SPACE FOR MY OWN PEACE.”
THOUGHT EXPERIEMENT
IMAGE: WURANATASHA OGUNJI, WILL I STILL CARRY WATER WHEN I AM A DEAD WOMAN? (2011)
In a not so distant past, I worked as a designer for a tech startup. I was doing user interface work for a newly-acquired Seattle based company. Somewhat of a role that fell into my lap at a time when I found myself in need of steady income. I had no idea the environment I was walking into – one run by those deemed worthy beneficiaries of the priesthood of higherlevel languages and the control systems they inform.* And it wasn’t long before my “superior” began to question everything that made me intriguing to him — my own advanced use of a native tongue, my aesthetic, my ease, and adaptability. Productivity wasn’t enough – I wasn’t predictable, or functioning within the limits of his bias or society’s stereotype of a Black woman in the workplace. My demeanor, attitude, and [interpersonal] communications didn’t fit design standards—the agreeable cultural fit. However an introvert, analytical, I was focused— rather than a representative of their expectations for a Black woman.
“It’s not unusual for someone to have to work under a boss they really don’t like. That’s just the way it is. I’ve had to do it too.” Those were the CEO’s words. His views on my safety, self-regard, and respect. How common is this experience to Black women who find themselves ‘othered’ in an office of tech bros?... in this world. Not a relational flaw, it’s a methodical part of capitalism’s design that allows for the maintenance of archaic cycles of abuse to help to maintain systems of oppression. The term microaggression always felt like an oxymoron to me. Emotionally, aggression rarely feels micro when you’re experiencing being stared down in a public space, questioned about your appearance, or even patronized for your acts of assertion. And the PTSD that results from these nearly everyday assaults is more copious than infrequent. Tech and social media companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft have made little changes in representation as the majority of their teams remain predominantly white and male. In terms of product development and testing solutions that attempt to solve our day to day problems, there is also a slant toward white subjectivity.
* https://www.academia.edu/779925/On_software_or_the_persistence_of_visual_knowledge pg 32
As emergent technologies develop and evolve, built upon real world models of societal oppression, Black bodies continue to function and make space for themselves within them. As noted by Ruha Benjamin, there’s a “form of exclusion and subordination built into the ways in which priorities are established and solutions defined in the tech industry.” This is something often felt by those objectified by the priorities of white supremacy, this is something I felt in that workplace, but furthermore in everyday life—while still being required to function within an institutional and instructionally forced society. Technologies replicate the violent fabrications not only within the consciousness of programmers, but also in its interactions with users as it accesses our online usage and behavior. Similar to holding the bias of its makers, as machine technology becomes more “intelligent,” they learn to think more like humans, and ultimately become more racist.** Most forms of online technology make relation to Black bodies through the context of global capitalism or ecommerce, and are built on the predication of the colonial desire to diminish and define Black identity. For the Black woman that is as an object of labor or a product for sexual consumption. Anything outside of that, of course, deemed a risk to the status quo.
Computer systems are a part of the larger matrix of systemic objectivity – “justice is (color)blind” goes the fiction and there is an enormous mystique around computer codes, which hides the human biases involved in technical design. -Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology In 2019, a study published in Science, described the significant bias of algorithms in the healthcare industry. The study found that a particular software used to enroll patients with complex medical needs was routinely enrolling healthier white patients at a higher rate than Black patients who were less healthy.*** By being scored as risks by the machine, hundreds of patients were denied services designed specifically for their needs—while those with less need gained access. ** Pg 45 Race After Technology, Ruha Benjamin *** https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/widely-used-health-care-prediction-algorithm-biased-againstblack-people
Emergent technologies such as algorithms were developed under the guise of being fair and neutral. But, these programmatic tools, used to help computers quickly and more efficiently solve problems through higher level programming and advanced languages, are evolving into a world similar to the one we live in today. Even in interactivity and design, programs are deterministically made to govern how we access and navigate through experiences on and offline.* It’s in understanding this, that we can gain a deeper understanding of the constant vulnerability of Black bodies, and even further the disregard for the safety and welfare of Black femme and nonbinary beings. The hashtag #IwanttoseeNyome was created in response to the social media network Instagram’s disregard and censorship of a plus size Black woman.** In comparison to the platform’s representation of mainstream media’s traditional standard of the skinny white woman, Black femme and nonbinary bodies find themselves banned, restricted, and often blocked at higher rates when celebrating their bodies and/or sexuality without nudity. Bringing to view the destortion of non-white In calling attention to western contemporary images of the Black female body, I recall Hortense Spillers poignant work, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Spillers emphasizes the distinction between bodies and flesh in the context of the captive and liberated subjects. She explains how although the flesh/body has been “liberated”, the rulings of “profitable “atomizing” of the captive body” remain “grounded in the originating metaphors of captivity and mutilation” that followed the Atlantic Slave Trade into the contemporary world. It is by understanding the conditions of the Black body following the slave trade that we can gain a better understanding of how Black identity functions in western societies on as well as offline. Spillers documents the history of the distortion of Black bodies by colonial fascination, Gender binaries of european society vs the ones that Black women were forced into. The confusion on how to program Black women into the algorithmic binaries can be attributed to some degree to the branding of Black bodies during European colonization. There is a depth of silence to the narrative of Black women in the slave trade which has encruched on modern day history and how we understand Black women and their identities in the world. There are the roles she maintains and must fulfill in modern day, but also there is her true identity that remains intact—abstract if not opaque as the world around allows. * https://points.datasociety.net/against-platform-determinism-899acdf88a3d **
h t t p s : / / w w w. t h eg u a r d i a n . co m / tec h n o l o g y / 2 0 2 0 / a u g / 0 9 /
Because Europeans were limited in the understanding of their own civilizations and ways of practice, it makes sense that they would reduce that of Black bodies into something they could comprehend, control and manipulate... in addtion to Black bodies ultimately being something they fear. And within emergent systems, the makers of technologies struggle to move outside of the status quo as they work to build tools in their own interest to make decisions for everyday institutions of commerce, law and justice (or lack thereof), education, medicine as well as the environment. For the programmer/engineer tied to the project sprints and deadlines it’s easier to just follow the patterns of what seemed to work before than to veer into the world of experience they’ve never truly attempted to see, let alone understand. When I think of my role and place in this world, I think of the constant fight or flight, constantly being aware and on edge… while trying to hold a space for my own peace.
Image: Ja’ The Giverny Document (2019) - Ja’Tovia Gary
I think of the layers that unfold in Ja’Tovia Gary’s The Giverny Document and that question of, “Do you feel safe?” Her cinematic poetry inquires into the lived experience of Black women, the cat calls, fetish attractions, violence... the levels of safety and protection associated with the Black feminine body. The beauty and chaos of it all being archived on film—shown with an accompanied expression from Black icons like Nina Simone (although beautiful I think, “what a shame to have to write a song like that”), and the generation of icons that made Harlem what it is. Gary as a Black woman, being observed, the observer and the creator.
I think to Lagos-based Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s “Will I still carry water when I am a dead” and the constant weight of spectation. Watching the plight and struggle of Black women like it’s a work art. Carrying the gaze of even those who look like them. Those unwilling to recognize the weight because they feel it is not their own. Shame—Carrying those eyes daily, carrying the world, and still, with fashion on our backs. I imagine (as I felt while watching the video) the pain and pressure of pushing through, being almost numb feeling cold—while those who strip and steal from us continue on freely, with no regard for another’s humanity. Watching to see if she slips, falls, or gives up. Black women take on many modes of survival to maintain self while traversing a world that forces them from birth to maintain a fugitive frame of mind. So much so that even in states of leisure our bodies are watched, stereotyped, and highlighted as socially deviant. The trials of daily life become routine as the oppressor, both in masculine and feminine form, demonstrates their consistent longing to be acknowledged by the same women they dismiss and attempt to regularly dispose of. Still, while under this constant watch she maintains fervor toward the unkown, toward whatever is ahead in this world, at work, online—surviving.... always hoping one day they’ll be something better than this. words by Tash Nikol
Photo: Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman (2011) Camera: Jelili Atiku
Tash Nikol Smith Self-published in 2021
D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T D I S S E N T DISSENT