Issue #65: Belonging and Inheritance
“And thus the... valley became a garden again, and the inheritance, which had been lost by cruelty, was regained by love.” — John Ruskin
Last night, I excavated my hologram fan I bought for Beyonce’s Renaissance tour to learn the line dance to Boots on the Ground from a YouTube video I watched with friends. Depending on your corner of the internet, you may have seen videos of trail ride gathering and country bars full of Black people line dancing, joyfully snapping fans and kicking up their heels in cowboy boots. If you’re in the American South, you are likely in one of these videos. Seeing masses of folks coordinated, all speaking the same language of joy and connection with their bodies is hypnotic to witness. But like any artistic expression, there’s more than what meets the eye.
It’s no accident that people have started to ask the question: Why are all the Black people line dancing while the world falls apart?
When we think of inheritance, we usually refer to the transfer of economic assets: money, property, goods, businesses. But the proliferation of line dancing illustrates where our ancestors pass along other assets that don’t have a monetary value and aren’t eye color or dimples.
The resurgence of line dancing at this time comes after a time when it feels Black people have exhausted the limits of protest and direct political advocacy as resistance. Rather than placing their bodies on the frontlines for more violence and trauma, folks have opted to turn toward each other for safety and affirmation, reinforcing community bonds and social cohesion and reenergizing ourselves with joy. And in so doing, resistance comes from refusal to accept the counternarrative of violence and domination. I see this phenomenon as a manifestation of our ancestral inheritance.
Historian Kellie Carter Jackson has written the book on African Americans’ inheritance of resistance. As Jackson writes, “Nearly every African American could teach a master class in refusing the terms in our degradation.” Her book We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance explores the breadth of collective resistance through the five sets of strategies: revolution, protection, force, flight and joy. In reviewing We Refuse, Black Book Stacks highlights the following excerpt from the chapter on joy:
Finally, joy is possibly the most important and strongest remedy that makes a push for Black personhood. While anti-Black violence has profoundly impacted the African American historical experience, it is not the totality of Blackness. While whiteness cannot be separated from violence, Blackness can be separated from oppression. The most powerful tool the Black Panther Party (BPP) employed was not guns but joy. Black pride invoked hope and happiness, which could be shields from the demoralizing and degenerative effects of racism. In jest and in truth, James Brown once said, ‘The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.’ There is no civil rights movement without singing. What was the long freedom struggle without music?…As Imani Perry wrote for The Atlantic, ‘Racism is terrible. Blackness is not.’ Joy is typically understood within a spiritual context and works in tandem with suffering.
On the surface, the Underground Railroad and line dancing have nothing in common. Jackson’s analysis explains why when I see these line dances, I think of Harriet Tubman fighting against enslavement through subversion, subterfuge and force. I also think of a second line in New Orleans. If you’ve ever seen or danced in a second line, you’ve experienced the duality of music and dance as celebration of life for the living and grieving lives lost. Music has long been a cultural feature of resistance and resilience from enslavement through the battle for civil rights. Dance has been an outlet for embodied joy as much as healing trauma. Most importantly, they are embodied expressions of emotions meant to be done collectively in community. It might be entertaining laughing at myself messing up the steps to Country Girl, but the magic lies in doing that with friends and strangers, remembering all of the crazy renditions we’ve seen at family reunions and weddings.
Science would explain this inheritance with epigenetics, the study of how our environment, behaviors and sociopolitical conditions rewrite our DNA in ways that become apparent in clinical and behavioral attributes. As people who have had to fight for everything for our survival, we have resistance built into our DNA because our ancestors fought to survive and refuse the conditions of oppression. Line dancing also reminds us that trauma is not our sole inheritance in a world that continuously degrades Black dignity and champions dispossession of property and community. We can instead answer the call for refusal and resistance with ease and joy.
Written histories and artifacts undoubtedly support cultural preservation. However, in a world where book bans and digital erasure and suppression continue to accelerate, a return to alternate ways of exchanging knowledge will continue to be invaluable.
Our ancestral inheritance of resistance is just as much a strategy for navigating the present as it is an opportunity to design a different future. Sankofa is originally a Twi word meaning “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind”. The symbol and word have re-entered public consciousness in new ways as folks begin to excavate and revive genealogical and ancestral rituals, beliefs and practices.
The Seventh Generation Principle or value is an often referenced axiom that originated from Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) philosophy. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy defines the principle (emphasis added):
Among the nations of the Haudenosaunee is a core value called the Seventh Generation. While the Haudenosaunee encompass traditional values like sharing labour and maintaining a duty to their family, clan and nation and being thankful to nature and the Creator for their sustenance, the Seventh Generation value takes into consideration those who are not yet born but who will inherit the world.
In their decision making Chiefs consider how present day decisions will impact their descendants. Nations are taught to respect the world in which they live as they are borrowing it from future generations. The Seventh Generation value is especially important in terms of culture. Keeping cultural practices, languages, and ceremonies alive is essential if those to come are to continue to practice Haudenosaunee culture.
The collective 7 Gen Cities holds space for provocation and dreaming for Indigenous, municipal, academic, and community leaders, as well as other civic imagineers to bring together ancestral inheritance with collective exploration and imagination to answer the following question: What are the physical, digital, and social infrastructures needed so that city dwellers – human and more-than-human – over the next seven generations will thrive in just, radically inclusive, caring, and regenerative communities? Also from their website:
Inspired by the Seventh Generation Principle of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and similar seven generations teachings that hold deeply spiritual and relational philosophies related to learning from the wisdom of our ancestors and the Earth, and making decisions and provisioning for current and future generations, 7GenCities fosters sacred, reciprocal relationships with peoples, lands and natures; radical inclusiveness; seven generations thinking and practice; and decolonizing systems in our city building, Earth stewardship and transformation of cities.
Intelligient Mischief aims to unleash the power of Black imagination through creative provocation and collective dreaming. One of their creative principles: “Ancient Futures. We learn from the past to shape the future. We look back to our ancestors to help us know what to create in the present to shape a beautiful future for our descendants.”
Recognizing our ancestral inheritance will take practice — practice noticing, listening, unlearning, remembering, inviting and welcoming others, and showing ourselves compassion when we inevitably make mistakes. But it will also allow us to reinforce collective security, strengthen solidarity, and have some fun along the way.