What Are the Master's Tools
We are at station 3 — the mask (something is hidden) — in our journey to unpack 'the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house'.
Title: What Are the Master’s Tools
Object: Scythe
12 Associations
- The mental block
- Opera box
- Spinning wheel
- Fist pump
- Platform shoes
- Swanee how I love ya how I love ya
- Top hat
- Buried ghosts
- Buried ghosts in the swamps infested with gators
- Poverty
- Lack of dignity
- Fire
If we all come out of Africa, then they are us and we are them. I ain’t talking colour. I’m talking generations. They are our hundred zillionth grandparents. They control fire.
- We control fire. Imagine that. That’s some fucking tool.
But we’re dark skinned then. We, who once had long arms and a pelvis that say we stand upright. I’ve seen her. I’ve seen Little Foot in Johannesburg University. I sign the register in the vault after Hilary Clinton. Her husband a white man who black people love because he has a vibrant gait, and a way with the people, a looseness in his soul. ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman ...' Who actually gives a fuck? That woman keeps a dress full of seaman. Getting scared now, myself, of where I’m going. The master’s tools. What are the master’s tools?
- Mendacity.
But it ain’t like a black person can’t lie. I’m travelling from the Rising Star Caves where Lee Burgess has unearthed Homo Naledi with women cos the chasm is so narrow they need thinner bodies to get through and pull out all the dead, all the buried ghosts. All the lead archaeologists are white. Why am I saying that? It is obvious. White South Africans. He begins, Howard, ‘I was born here where am I supposed to go?’ We are passing people, poor people who live under plastic and corrugated iron and are begging at his car. It’s so ugly to see. So, fucking, ugly to see. He turns on them. Not actually on them, he turns to me, as he turns on them. 'The electricity is out again. They do it systematically. The lights are out. You have to take your chance with your life.' I’ve done it a few times now, I’m pretty proud of that. He’s angry as fuck. He waves them away from his car. ‘If they’d have brought us in this wouldn’t be happening. The lights would fucking work. The electric would work. They didn’t think about the temperature.’ He tries to give them a go, Mandela, of the master’s tools, but they don’t have the knowledge, the know-how, and now they are all paying for it. He’s an educated man. Howard. This is the pinnacle of the master’s tools.
- Education.
Education gives them the go ahead, the head start. A side effect of slavery, of enslaving people, is they can afford to follow the stars, and grind glass lenses to see the spectrum, draw a flea, and understand that South African heat will melt the wiring. They’re used to spending cash to go that extra mile. Slow down. Don’t get ahead, Linda. No, fuck it, that is also a master’s tools.
- They know how to spend money.
They know the longevity of spending money and how that will be cheaper in the long run. Like when I have my own plantation and I need a battalion to light my candles at my decadent table. This is not a metaphor. This is real. In the Ruins of the Big House, I declare myself a mistress. Getting ahead of yourself again. This is their second biggest tool, that I am not supposed to do that. I am not supposed to do anything like that. I am supposed to wait for things to be handed to me. Adhere to, acknowledge, bow to the mental block between me and:
- Entitlement.
I am supposed to remain a ghost buried under my lack of dignity. I am supposed to beg. Give me some power. ‘Please, sir, I want some more.' No. Fuck off. I am taking power. My power in Howard’s car that day is to say nothing. I don’t admonish him. I don’t care. He is pickled. Do you really think one conversation with me is gonna change how he sees these 'animals' with their hands to his window? When he swats them away, they cower in case his anger rises when he is one man, and they are a thousand. I just watch. I just watch him tie himself in knots. Knots of clearing up his mess, his hate, but digging himself in deeper. Swimming in it. Luxuriating in it.
- The next tools. The spinning wheel & the loom.
Spin. Spin. Spin. Click-click. Clickity click. There is a rhythm to the spinning. It builds on each other. A long piece of thread they continually make into the cloth of society. I watch him cutting its pattern. Threading its needle. Presenting the garment to me. The divine right garment that says these 'animals' must stay naked. In poverty. This is an educated man. A professor at Johannesburg University. Who shakes hands with Hilary Clinton a few weeks ago. Does she let her hair down and luxuriate in the southern drawl? She’s from Chicago actually.
The 'Black Laws': Although Chicago was an endpoint for the Underground Railroad and a refuge for freedom seekers, the city and state enforced harsh discriminatory laws known as the Illinois Black Laws. From 1819 to 1865, these laws heavily restricted the freedoms of Black residents, preventing them from voting, testifying against white people in court, and requiring them to carry certificates of freedom.
Cos if he’s talking to me like this, who ain’t white, what the fuck is he saying to her? Their shared breast milk will hear this law. Another great master’s tool.
- The law.
Here is the law sat next to me drifting down a freeway from the Rising Star Excavation still in his opera box with his binoculars trained on these 'animals' that he expects to sing Swanee how I love ya, how I love you, like when his family own the farm. On their television in the 1970s. We’re pulling up there now. Prime land. Another tool.
- Prime land.
On which to grow things. Like the sugar cane my family scythe in the poverty left behind, in a row. In a row. And the sugar presses are a feature of the white weddings that take place in Appleton’s white rum distillery.
- Another tool. All the stones of the tumbledown plantations.
The stones they use to drown the ghosts in the swamps infested by gators. Where are the gators? The undigested bodies are floating on top. The fantasy is beautiful. The Spanish Moss hanging from the oaks that stand both sides of the plantation entrance. Where are the gators and those swamps? It’s such a boring place Jamaica, not a ball gown in sight.
- Another tool. Control of the narrative.
Gone with the Wind and a heroic white woman yanking down the green velvet curtains to get her man and save their land and save their legacy and save their pride and save… ‘Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.’
Fist pumps. And Quincy Jones in gold body chains. And platform boots. And Superfly. Cultural appropriation. Gone out of fashion a bit. Overtly, anyway.
Let’s give them a platform. Listen to their side of the story. ‘You — what’s your story? You’ve been oppressed! Tell us. Wait. Let us take notes. We can hang it on sugar paper. Tell us.’
- Sugar paper. Another tool.
Cos who doesn’t want gold stars? And rolled up scrolls? That say you can appropriate our culture. 'You successfully appropriated our culture. Haven’t you done well? We’ve kind of run out of top hats. But it wouldn’t lie right on your hair anyway. Maybe we can make you something more appropriate.'
- Master of disguise, the lies, the mendacity.
They have an entire colouring box full of them, they use to grade who they will let use their tools, what hour of the day, and for how long, so they maintain the integrity of the architecture of the building.
