Black Joy as a Remedy

Black Joy as a Remedy Kellie Carter Jackson (bio) Some of us fight racism by raising our black children to know joy. This matters too. —Ashley Simpo I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all but about it . . . No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife. —Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) I see joy as one of the most potent tools of revolutionary work toward liberation. Author Toni Morrison said, “Finally, in this long trek through three hundred years of Black life, there was joy, which is what I mostly remember. The part of our lives that was spent neither on our knees nor hanging from trees.”1 The bulk of Black life is made from joy. Joy is not the denial of Black pain, trauma, or death, but the hope that comes with activism, resistance, and refusal. Black joy is a haven. There are ways in which Black people have carved out maroon societies to experience joy that cannot be stolen. Whether we are discussing the theft of land or TikTok dance moves, the soul of Blackness cannot be purchased or mimicked. Joy is often defined by the Black church. Scripture and gospel songs remind readers and listeners that joy is not stumbled upon. Joy is not an immediate outcome. It is lasting and persists in the midst of hardship. A constant refrain in the Black church is the biblical scripture Psalm 30: 5, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Again, joy is certain, but not instant. I remember growing up listening to the Georgia Mass Choir, Dorothy Anderson, and Kirk Franklin bellow out the lyrics: [End Page 86] Joy, joy, God’s great joyJoy, joy, down in my soulSweet, beautiful, soul saving joyOh, joy, joy in my soul Joy was an exhortation. It was dependable during trying times. I chose to write of abolitionist futures through the lens of Black joy because I see it as one of the most potent tools of revolutionary work toward liberation. Black joy is the ultimate expression of Black humanity. Love, hope, humor, and pleasure are all a part of joy. The joy of laughter, food, dance, dress or adornment, rhetoric, play, art, can be employed to dispel and destroy Whiteness as supreme, aspirational, or norm. Anti-Blackness is the work of White supremacy, it perpetuates beliefs that Black people are sub-human and deficient. Accordingly, Black joy produces the antidote to the degeneration and erosion of Black life. Black joy can be bold or benign. Roller skating, fishing, singing, teasing, sharing, resting, vacationing, getting dressed up, birthdays, or quitting, if it compels joy then it does the work of refuting the claim of Black people as inhuman. Black joy can be confusing to White people. In 2020, scholar Imani Perry brilliantly wrote about the meaning of Black joy amidst the massive protests sweeping across the country. Protestors would march, chant, shout, and then somewhat organically burst into song and dance. American racism is unquestionably rapacious. To identify the achievement and exhilaration in black life is not to mute or minimize racism, but to shame racism, to damn it to hell. The masters were wrong in the antebellum South, when they described the body-shaking, delighted chuckle of an enslaved person as simplemindedness. No, that laugh—like our music, like our language, like our movement—was a testimony that refused the terms of our degradation. In the footage of the protests over the past several weeks, we have seen black people dancing, chanting, singing. Do not misunderstand. This is not an absence of grief or rage, or a distraction. It is insistence.2 “To refuse the terms of our degradation” is a masterclass that nearly every African American could teach. Some of the most potent examples of Black joy as a refusal have come...