Assata Shakur writes: “People can get used to anything; the less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.”
I witness my sisters and mothers of color all too often succumb to this tolerance, this lidocaine of amnesia. This getting-used-to takes place in shopping malls, in crowded bars, in public in plain daylight, when our body parts are severed from our humanity, when we are grabbed and groped, consumed; when we are made free for the taking, numbed and violated. People can get used to anything.
This tolerance for oppression grows when we refuse to acknowledge each other’s pain. When we advise each other to “forgive him,” or to simply “move on.” Tolerance for oppression is built on this foundation of “forgiveness” interpersonally, when we are asked to forget past trauma in relationships. Both forgiveness and forgetfulness are expected and demanded of our bodies for the sake of another’s pleasure or profit.
This tolerance for oppression grows when our institutions demand we forget stains of spilled blood on monuments and the continued struggle of our peoples for the sake of their comfort. We are being tested in this tolerance when our institutions tell us that monuments to commemorate the lives of “persons of color” can be dug up and removed, but a monument that celebrates white supremacy somehow cannot be. People can get used to anything.
Our tolerance grows too when we begin to believe that we demand too much; we are intubated with the idea that we are taking things too far, we are overreacting, we are “crazy.” Sometimes lovers and friends, like institutions, become physicians in this twisted practice of tolerance; we are prescribed to think less when oppressors medicate us with the words “chill,” and “relax,” attempting to speak us into blissful delirium. We are cured of stinging anger, we grow to accept our aching, tired bones. Tolerance grows when we become convinced that we are owed nothing; people can get used to anything.
This tolerance also becomes normalized when we begin to believe in the politicized promises of a tomorrow never intended for us. When some of us choose as our savior yet another presidential messiah who either “marched with us” or who happens to have a uterus like us, but neither of whom can ever deliver what we are owed. Tolerance grows when we begin to look outside ourselves for a “savior” who looks more pale or more palatable.
Tolerance of oppression is expected as systematic murder becomes normalized on a TV screen; with each bullet in each brown and black body, we are instructed to believe that oppression is the normal state of things. We are distracted by noise that makes us think less about our oppression, and we are told instead to justify and rationalize our own death, our own diminishment.
People can get used to anything. But we won’t.
