Rep. Rashida Tlaib is correct to disapprove of Clinton — publicly, privately, or however she may choose.
Last week, Representative Rashida Tlaib engaged the crowd of a caucus event for Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, as they booed Hillary Clinton — encouraging a rightful condemnation of the former Secretary of State.
Clinton, in the past month, has leveled unnecessary criticism against Sanders while simultaneously downplaying her close friendships with Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
Tlaib is correct to disapprove of Clinton — publicly, privately, or however she may choose.
Clinton’s entire political career has been an affirmation of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Her politic is based on a righteousness that she does not possess, but one that is automatically imparted to white women like her.
Clinton is a racist. (I am subconsciously urged to write that she is “implicitly” racist to uphold a veneer of civility that will only benefit the white reader. Thus, in the energy of Tlaib, I write that Clinton is a racist). She used free prison labor (modern-day slavery) to tidy her Arkansas mansion; she labeled Black youth as “superpredators.” She, alongside her husband, has done irreparable harm to the Black community.
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After the 1998 Impeachment, Clinton broke her 8-month silence to her husband in a characteristically blind commitment to American hegemony: she “urged him to bomb” Serbia so as to “defend our way of life.” Clinton is also an imperialist.
White women laud Clinton as a feminist icon and demand that we too see her as one.
Tlaib’s quick refusal of that falsity has been inspirational. Tlaib, to me, is an inspiration.
The first-ever Palestinian-American Congresswoman does not mince her views. They are presented as they are. Clinton is shown to be exactly who she is — an individual that should be booed with zero hesitation.
She is vocal in her anger. Anger is often and rightfully a response to injustice. But, so often anger becomes divorced from reason and is rendered an “unreasonable” emotion — specifically in BIPOC.
To see Tlaib sit comfortably in her anger and to then present it as her truth — as her rejection of the silence that is imposed on persons like her — requires tremendous strength.
Each time that I see the video of her exclaiming, “We’re going to impeach this motherfucker!” I am also reminded of Audre Lorde’s essay, The Transformation of Silence into Action.
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“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood,” Lorde writes. “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”
Tlaib has demonstrated — by action — that she does not succumb to her silences. Even if it may arrive with consequences.
When asked to choose protest or a temporary entrance to Palestine in order to visit her grandmother, she chose protest. She doubled down on her criticism of the Israeli apartheid state. She rejected the inflicted silence, even as her “last chance to meet her [grandmother]” is now taken.
Tlaib continues to reveal the truth, her truth as it is — unrefined and cutting.
That is a gargantuan task in a country, in a world that socializes BIPOC to act within the confines of fear. I have failed at this task time in and time out. I try to make my truths palatable, and in their washed down versions, my truths become just another reflection of the falsities that I have been asked to believe.
If you consider Tlaib’s reprimand of Clinton as “unbecoming,” but Clinton’s own imperialism and racism as worthy of applause and celebration, then you are yet another iteration of the white supremacy.