As political scientist Sir Alfred Zimmern – an advocate of the League – once said, “the League of Nations was never intended to be, nor is it, a revolutionary organization,” rather it strategically provided an efficient international institution by accepting the world as it was. Although Zimmern expressed notable concerns about the systematization of pre-war ideas with minimal innovations, he was unable to effectively consider the significant impact that the League of Nations would have on the current world order.1 Emerging from the heart-wrenching bloodshed of World War I, the League of Nations was founded “to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.”2 This organization was a preemptive measure led by world leaders to diminish the chance of war through collective security, disarmament, and negotiation. The League marked a new era in international relations by inviting global government leaders to find peaceful solutions collectively, rather than through minor alliances or applications of force. The unique political climate of the early twentieth century caused the League of Nations to fail in honoring its Wilsonian ideals and executing its Covenant. However, those unfulfilled ideals prompted a revolutionary advancement in international cooperation and an essential prerequisite to the current world order.
Towards the end of World War I, post-war reconstruction entailed fixing a flawed world order. According to international relations scholar Walter Russell Mead: before the war, except in the most glaring circumstances, states were free to treat their subjects as they wished. Even though governments were expected to abide by the accepted principles of public international law, there was no supranational body responsible for enforcing these standards.3 The horrors of World War I affirmed the need to reconstruct the post-war world by creating a cooperative international system that would prevent war. Nearing the war’s end, Europe’s long trek of conflict increased its need for external rescue. It was in no position to lead the cause to secure world peace. The United States, however, was in a more stable position to “serve humanity,” as President Woodrow Wilson idealistically believed. His nationalist idealism was reminiscent of the America-first ideology that grew the U.S. empire over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As President Wilson aligned American concerns to those of the rest of the world, his succeeding efforts elevated the U.S. as a global leader and allowed American ideals to penetrate the global system.4 Although Thomas Paine had once proposed an international league to secure world peace and American progressives had been urging the United States to lead the reconstruction of the world order since 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s proposal of such a league into the global system was nonetheless revolutionary.5 Wilson introduced a blueprint for post-war peace negotiations in his Fourteen Points, a precursor to the League of Nations Covenant based on Wilsonian idealism.
In his Fourteen Points (1918), Wilson described necessary provisions of peace. He began by rejecting “secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments.”6 This statement was a reaction to World War I trauma that outlined his belief in foreign policy. He blamed problems of the nation and world as the result of “conflict-ridden factional politics brought on by the unenlightened pursuit of self-interest.”7 As a result, Wilson instead desired that “the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation,” like the United States, which “wishe[d] to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression.”8 By hoping to make the world safe for every “peace-loving nation,” or those led by democratic governments, Wilson sought to spread democracy worldwide. This was an extension of his idealism which desired a reinvigorated sense of impartial statesmanship devoted to the common good, both on a national and global platform.9 This was a method of globally transferring American nationalism so that the proprietor of democracy – the United States – may have the extensive influence of promoting and maintaining democracy throughout the world, whether that be during times of war or simply in international relations.
The belief of a sovereign state’s inevitability to be influenced by international affairs fueled Wilson’s desire to correct the world order. In his Fourteen Points, he stated: “All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.”10 This prime example of Wilson’s belief that interdependence among global nations could not be ignored, caused him to transfer his American nationalism to the succeeding world order. In hoping to solidify American global leadership, Wilson sought to create a system that simultaenously increased dependence on international cooperation while placing the United States at the head of the table. Believing in America’s superiority as well as the strength of the democratic institution, both of which validated his desire “to sustain liberal idealism in a postwar world,”11 enabled Wilson to propose an ideological response to an international problem. He ended his Fourteen Points by coining the idea of a “general association of nations… formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”12 This influential fourteenth point, in conjunction with previous points that urged public diplomacy, removal of trade barriers, reduction of national armaments, and the adjustment of colonial claims, envisioned a post-war world order fueled by liberal idealism.13 This liberal, or Wilsonian, idealism held that a state’s internal political philosophy, which was democracy for America, was the ultimate goal of its foreign policy.
In his Fourteen Points Wilson merely proposed a world organization for collective security, yet the 1919 Paris Peace Conference signed this organization into fruition; the Armistice that ended World War I was also signed based on Wilsonian ideals. When the victorious powers negotiated Germany’s future and discussed a new international order, Wilson’s America-first solution was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles (1919).14 His emphasis on America and rejection of all European diplomatic traditions would inevitably fuel European opposition.15 Regardless, the opposition to and failure of the League of Nations would result in its inability to honor its covenant. For instance, the treaty was introduced with the purpose “to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.”16 One of the obvious, and most significant sources of failure to this purpose, was that the United States neglected to join the League of Nations. The U.S. Senate being unwilling to sign over executive power to an international body “implied a serious loss of credibility … [that deprived] the organization of its main source of inspiration [and] the support of the American’s power.”17 The retracted participation of such a powerful nation weakened the League’s ability to cope with a very dangerous international situation.
America’s absence depleted the organization’s ability to foster a cooperative world order. Wilson’s vision of combining American interests within an idealized organization of international cooperation fell through the cracks. And so, the League of Nations was left to pick up the pieces of international destruction through a broken system. This system was not capable of handling problems such as “unsolved minority problems, serious economic strains, the substantial marginalization of the Soviet Union, and the humiliation imposed on Germany,”18 yet it would be forced to. Despite not being able to enforce solutions efficiently, the League still revolutionized the international obligation to rectify global conflicts.
As stated in Article 8 and 9 of the Treaty of Versailles, members of the League would “reduce [their] national armaments, [including military, naval, and air forces], to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations” in order to maintain peace.19 Controlling individual nations’ armaments for the sake of international cooperation was revolutionary; the unprecedented bloodshed of World War I proved this not to be the norm of the previous world order. In Article 10, the League prioritized the “respect and [preservation of] external aggression [for the] territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League,” which essentially protected the sovereignty of each nation in the League.20 This establishment of sovereignty in conjunction with Article 11’s establishment of a League-wide alliance, officially dissolved the capability of conflicting factional politics to result in war. These examples of revolutionary international cooperation were formed to combat the threat of entangled alliances that would disrupt liberal democracy as Wilson first envisioned.
To make the world safe for democracy, the League did not adamantly prepare to combat a totalitarian force like Nazi Germany. In Article 230 of the Treaty of Versailles, the German government was compelled to take “just appreciation of responsibility”21 for World War I. It went so far as to antagonize the nation for its wartime actions by mandating German monetary reparations, land concessions, and demilitarization, which excluded Germany from having a seat in the new world order. Many Germans felt betrayed by the Treaty of Versailles and all its members: after all, Germany did agree to the Armistice and was willing to peacefully negotiate after World War I. This betrayal permeated Germany for years to come, which most significantly affected Adolf Hitler.
Hitler’s resentment over the war’s end and the continued unfair treatment of Germany caused him to reject collaboration. Before becoming Chancellor and creating his dictatorship under the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (1925). It asserted Hitler’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles as well as the world order it created. For example, Hitler believed the Treaty subjected “The rest of the world [to look] upon [Germany] only as its valet, or as a kindly dog that will lick its master’s hand after he has been whipped.”22 In order to rectify the antagonization of Germany, Hitler broke the Treaty by incorporating Mein Kampf into German foreign policy i.e. German rearmament, overturning the Versailles system, creating individual alliances, and invading non-German lands. In fear of igniting another world war, politicians allowed Hitler’s radical rule to play out. He was initially viewed as a mere extreme nationalist, yet in the succeeding decade his Nazism proved this to be an understatement.23
The failure of the League to combat Nazi Germany demonstrated its peak fragility. However, the system on which it was built would persevere. The League of Nations lacked the administrative strength and enforcement necessary to stop Hitler. This was made irrelevant when Germany fell to Allied powers, thus reigniting hope in a Wilsonian system.24 When the League of Nations came crashing down, its pieces were used to build the United Nations. In 1945, representatives of fifty countries met in San Francisco at the United Nations conference in order to draw up the U.N. Charter. Since the League proved to be “incapable of stopping aggression,” hopes embedded in a Wilsonian order were high for its successor.
Once again the United States would take the lead in preparing this international organization. Similar to Wilson in 1919, “Franklin Roosevelt had been the key inspiration for the U.N.” but his sudden death propelled Vice President Harry S. Truman to lead the cause. In his Address to the San Francisco Conference (1945), American President Harry S. Truman, despite lacking foreign policy expertise, spoke of his liberal idealist hopes for “mankind’s future and the United Nations’ role in preserving it.”25 He acknowledged that “If we had had this Charter a few years ago– and above all, the will to use it– millions now dead would be alive. If we should falter in the future in the will to use it, millions now living will surely die.” His dig at the League’s failure to stop war fueled his atonement for the sins of the past whereby the United States did not participate in the international organization. In spite of American participation and leadership, Truman assured that this charter would not be “the work of any single nation or group of nations,” instead it would be the result of “tolerance for the views and interests of others.”26 In this mindset, Truman assured that the United Nations would promote peace and justice, defend human rights and fundamental freedoms, and accomplish everything under the pretense that the “United Nations… remain united.”27
Not only did Sir Alfred Zimmern argue that the League of Nations was not revolutionary, he also believed it did “not supersede the older methods. It merely supplement[ed] them.”28 Seeing as the United Nations is the fix for a failed League, the same could easily be said for the U.N. When considering the modern-day implications of a cooperative world system, understanding the foundations of the first international institution is crucial because it gave light to the current world order. The modernized world is enslaved to passionate nationalism and inevitable internationalism, thus making world organizations the safest form of global cooperation. As a result, Wilsonian ideals continue to influence the current world order. Because of its Wilsonian influence, the United Nations should be protected against frail cooperation and ideological threats. After all, Wilson’s dreams could have been accomplished had it not been for “the combination of European obstinacy against the League’s Wilsonian principles and the absence of American postwar leadership.”29 Looking forward to the success of the United Nations entails understanding that “important changes have occurred in the world distribution of power, in the world’s economic and political structure, [and] in the world’s ideological atmosphere.”30 Being subject to these changes, the current world order may or may not be able to live up to Wilson’s ideals successfully. Because of the current United Nations, the success of a Wilsonian international organization is still up in the air. Only time will tell.
1. Leland M. Goodrich, “From League of Nations to United Nations,” International Organization 1, no. 1 (February 1947): 4, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2703515.
2. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” in Ideas and Identity in Western Thought: Readings in Politics, Economics, Society, Law, and War, ed. Michael Holm (San Diego: Cognella, 2022), 266.
3. Walter Russell Mead, “The End of the Wilsonian Era: Why Liberal Internationalism Failed,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 1 (January-February 2021), https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A64 5582674/AONE?u=mlin_b_bumml&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=29c17807.
4. Edward M. Bennett and Norman A. Graebner, The Versailles Treaty and its Legacy: The Failure of the Wilsonian Vision (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 11, https://eboo kcentral.proquest.com/lib/bu/reader.action?docID=802976.
5. Michael Holm, The Marshall Plan: A New Deal for Europe, (New York: Routledge, 2017), 2.
6. “President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918),” National Archives, accessed June 24, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-woodrow-wilsons-14-points.
7. Edward J. Harpham, The American Political Science Review 89, no. 4 (December 1995): 1040, https://doi.org/10.2307/2082562.
8. “President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918).”
9. Edward J. Harpham, The American Political Science Review, 1040.
10. “President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918).”
11. Edward J. Harpham, The American Political Science Review, 1040.
12. “President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918).”
13. Michael Holm, “The Great War and the Great Peace,” (Powerpoint Presentation, Boston University London, London, England, May 30, 2022).
14. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” 265.
15. Michael Holm, The Marshall Plan, 2-3.
16. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” 266.
17. Luciano Tosi, “The League of Nations: An international relations perspective,” Uniform Law Review 22, no. 1 (March 2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/ulr/unw055.
18. Tosi, “The League of Nations: An international relations perspective.”
19. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” 266.
20. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” 266.
21. The Treaty of Versailles, “The Treaty of Versailles (1919),” 274.
22. “Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler,” Great War, accessed June 25, 2022, https://greatwar.nl/ books/meinkampf/meinkampf.pdf.
23. Michael Holm, “The Interwar Period: The Second World War,” (Powerpoint Presentation, Boston University London, London, England, June 9, 2022).
24. Mead, “The End of the Wilsonian Era: Why Liberal Internationalism Failed.”
25. Harry S. Truman, “Harry S. Truman: Address to the San Francisco Conference (1945),” in Ideas and Identity in Western Thought: Readings in Politics, Economics, Society, Law, and War, ed. Michael Holm (San Diego: Cognella, 2022), 343.
26. Truman, “Harry S. Truman: Address to the San Francisco Conference (1945),” 344-8.
27. Truman, “Harry S. Truman: Address to the San Francisco Conference (1945),” 344-8.
28. Goodrich, “From League of Nations to United Nations,” 5.
29. Michael Holm, The Marshall Plan, 4.
30. Goodrich, “From League of Nations to United Nations,” 21.
Artists throughout time have done impressive pictorial recreations of literary works that speak to them. However, what would the recreation painting be like if the poet painted it himself? In “The Blessed Damozel,” Dante Gabriel Rossetti tells the story of a dead woman in the Heaven, or the damozel, dreaming to rejoin her living lover on earth. However, when the dream ends, she weeps about the uncertainty of her future with the lover. As a poet and a painter, Continue reading
From my birth until I was old enough to stay home alone, my grandmother babysat my younger sister and me when our parents were at work, and we lovingly called her our Nana. Nana was an excellent babysitter given her experience as an elementary school teacher for most of her life. I always thought she had the mind of a child; she knew how to think like us and knew how to play games with us. She would always let me and my sister win; often resulting in a fight between us. Eventually we got too old to be babysat anymore and these childhood events turned into memories that I still cherish today. But Nana doesn’t have these same memories. She doesn’t even know who my sister or I am. For she has Alzheimer’s Disease. Continue reading
The Christian Bible is the most read book in the world. And the impact of the Bible’s wide readership can be seen everywhere—in history, in modern day, in politics, in culture. Even in the United States, which does not consider itself a Christian nation, Judeo-Christian values have often been cited as integral to its political foundations. The pledge to the flag describes a nation under God, hopeful officials running for office use their faith to build credibility, and God or the divine is mentioned in every single state constitution (Sandstrom). It is fair to assume that something so involved in the justification of establishment, and that something so widely consumed and accepted, is pro-establishment. But the reality is more complicated Continue reading
Throughout history, humans have expressed ideas that are beyond our understanding of what is around us. The stars were told to be omens of the past and future, and comets were labelled as prophecies of impending disasters. These untold superstitions of our forefathers are some of the first examples of stories that humans lay witness too, yet one cannot help but ask just exactly what sparked such stories in the minds of our ancestors? One word: creativity. Continue reading
As crowds of people waited in line for health services, I asked patients questions about where they got their drinking water, their living situations, and I was always told to ask women if they were pregnant or could possibly be pregnant. I found that many of these girls were afraid to admit they were pregnant, and would deny it until there was proof in a pregnancy test. This was Bocas Del Toro, Panama. The towering waterfalls and trees of vibrant green could not cover up the complex realities of an indigenous community that suffers in the hands of the viruses and diseases that have roamed this earth for centuries. Continue reading
“Moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side, a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is that act of speech … that is the expression of our movement from object to subject—the liberated voice.”1 – bell hooks
She walks to the bus stop and sits on the bench. The 12-year-old girl is making her way home after a school ski trip, so she patiently awaits the arrival of the 28. It usually comes frequently, but strangely enough—not today. As she waits, she whips out a book from her bulging backpack, which overflows with dozens of novels, loose papers, and anything else you can imagine. Packed beyond capacity, the bag probably weighs more than her, so she nearly buckles under its weight. She’s a bit of a hoarder with an urge to keep everything at her disposal. If you stay ready, you don’t gotta get ready. But this time, nothing could have prepared her for what was about to happen.
Now, it might seem odd for a child to carry books to a bus stop just in case they get bored. But this child is always reading—any little free time she has, she reads. When her mom asks her what she wants for Christmas, every year without failure or hesitation, she responds with a list of novels. This then swiftly prompts her mom to tease her and say, “Books are not real presents, I can buy you books any day!” But she knows her mother will buy them anyway. Her parents don’t allow her to go out much, so books offer a world of adventure within the comfort of her own home. Her current book comes from The Land of Stories. She owns the entire series and has read almost every volume. Her excitement begins to bubble as she flips the cover to page one of The Mother Goose Diaries. However, she barely makes it halfway through the page when a man approaches.
He’s a middle-aged Black man. She finds it peculiar that he sits right next to her on the bench, but she pays him no mind and continues reading. However, much to her dismay, he proceeds to address her, asking about the book. For the sake of cordiality, she answers, but concisely. She again tries to get back to her book, but soon realizes that that won’t be possible. And of all days, the bus HAD to be late today. The 28 is the most frequent and popular bus in Boston, so why does it decide to pull this mess on this. specific. day. Talk about poor timing.
“Gimme a kiss.” An alert sounds off in her mind; this is a dangerous situation. She must’ve misheard the man because, although she did find him annoying and a bit intrusive for a stranger, she didn’t peg him as a threat. He inches closer and the armrest becomes the only barrier between them. She is physically frozen, but her mind races a million miles per hour assessing her current predicament and looking for an escape. What can she say or do that’ll keep her safe, but will also put an end to this? She decides to tread lightly because one of his hands rests in his pocket, so she can’t tell if he has a weapon. She lets out a faint awkward laugh to lighten the mood, but it does not work as a deterrent, and before she can even register what is happening, his lips effortlessly engulf hers. The pungent taste of liquor consumes her as he drenches her face in saliva. His hands slowly slither up, around, and all over her body, overpowering her petite core while she remains a lifeless shell in his constrictive arms. When he finally surrenders her lips and relinquishes his touch, she slowly stands up, gathers her belongings, and hoists her heavy bag onto her back. But before she leaves, she turns to him and reassuringly says, with an unsuspecting smile, “Don’t worry I’ll be right back, I just gotta go do something really quick.” She has no intention of even looking back at that bus stop; she will wait for the bus at the school building instead. However, she doesn’t make it 20 feet away from the bench when the man stands up and crosses the street never to be seen again. He knows what he did.
My fault … Tell no one … Deep breath … Don’t cry … Take it to the grave … Nothing happened.
But who is she?
I am her, she is me. She is Bermina Marseille Chery. We are one and the same.
In that 45-second walk back to the school, I devised a plan to never speak of it to a single soul, but the terror in my eyes had other plans, and my mortified face sought to say everything that I couldn’t in that moment. They screamed with the specific aim to broadcast our secret to everyone. And they succeeded.
Is it a blessing or a curse that my face reacts with expressions before my brain can process them? She speaks before my mouth does and reveals the secrets that my heart wants to keep close and that my mind seeks to conceal and compartmentalize. Ultimately, she outed me. I guess two things can be true at the same time, so maybe it’s both a blessing—because no one should be made to shoulder such a burden on their lonesome—and a curse—because I was not ready.
I was not ready to confront my preparedness to protect a sexual predator simply because he was Black.
“Do you remember what he looked like, or what he had on?”
“No.”
I didn’t lie though; I honestly couldn’t recall. Just mere moments after the incident, the recollections played in a blurred loop. I could only remember what he did to me and how it made me feel, nothing more. However, I knew that even if I did, I wouldn’t have said anything. But why? I was a child that was just violated by an adult in the most egregious way, yet my first instinct was to protect him. Why did I instinctively choose to protect this man who just harmed me? Sadly, this phenomenon is nothing new. Black women often feel the need to protect Black men even after having been wronged by them. Take Megan Pete, more commonly known as Megan Thee Stallion, for example. Meg is a famous Black Grammy Award-winning rapper. Although she has had multiple chart-topping hits and received a plethora of accolades, even she cannot escape this instinctual need to protect. In 2020, after leaving a party, a verbal altercation ensued between Meg and, another well-known rapper, Tory Lanez. Lanez escalated the situation when he proceeded to take out a gun and shoot her, wounding her feet. When the police arrived at the scene, instead of telling the officers that Lanez shot and injured her, she lied and said she stepped on glass. While recounting the events of that night, in exasperation she stated, “I tried to save this nigga. Even though he shot me, I tried to spare him.”2 Ultimately, she put the safety of Tory, a Black man, above her own by acting as his safeguard from the police and the potential violence they could have inflicted upon him.
Megan’s response strikingly parallels mine in the sense that we acted in solidarity with our race rather than our gender. Like Meg, I felt I had to protect a Black man from the American justice system; the system that has arbitrarily looted and discarded the livelihoods of Black men from its inception and continues to do so today. Police practices combined with legal policies resulted in the systematically disproportionate severe treatment of Black Americans within the criminal justice system.3 Knowing this, it didn’t matter that the man at the bus stop violated me and infringed upon my safety because the societal structures in place would likely do worse by him than he could ever have done to me. Therefore, as a Black person myself, I felt it incumbent upon me to guard the life of another. It just so happened that forgetting his attire and appearance, though unintentional, enabled me to do so.
However, this begs the question: who then protects Black women and women altogether? Why did I readily put the protection and safety of my race above my gender? How can I justify that? Black women, like Megan and me, feel a deep burning desire to protect Blackness even in its criminality, and we must unpack that. Why is this the case? Race as we know it merely exists as a social construct that holds no biological or scientific basis, but it feels deeper than that.4 The connection I feel to other Black people courses through my veins and pumps through my blood as if to imply a biological connection. The sanctity, therefore, of Blackness transcends that of makeshift constructs and creates a family. An unspoken support system is formed to replicate the one that society never granted us. However, this support can morph into a form of violence when practiced in extremes, and the protection of Blackness in its criminality exists as an example of such. It’s counterproductive because it poses a direct threat to the sanctitude of Blackness and that of other identities outside of race. Therefore, in our perceived protection of Blackness, we undermined it, in part, because we neglected our own safety in the process. Are we not Black as well?
With that said, what becomes of the moral obligations surrounding this situation as they pertain to me? To be frank, I considered shielding a criminal from the eyes of justice, so does that make me a criminal as well? I pondered upon harboring a fugitive in the quarters of my mind and withholding the evidence needed to capture him. In a sense, I contributed in a hypothetical form of obstruction of justice. Therefore, if I could think of knowingly protecting a sexual predator and was willing to act upon it had I been given the chance, how can I consider myself a good person with an adept moral compass? If anything, I am just as culpable as he is. I completely disregarded the physical, mental, and psychological well-being of all women for the sake of saving the future of one man. My lenient thought process, if acted upon, would have made me an accomplice in his potential future violations of women; if it hadn’t already. I am both a Black person and a woman and the convergence of these two identities meet at a crossroads which obliges me to pick a side. At that moment, I abandoned my womanhood in favor of my Blackness. I left women to fight and defend themselves against the dangers of this man alone. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”5 Although said silence existed solely as a hypothetical configuration of my imagination, or a fleeting invasive thought, by these standards, it still maintained its detrimental effect. But wait … it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do this to myself, it was done to me, yet I continue to let him off the hook without giving myself the same due diligence. I never resented him, nor did I seek vengeance; I always wished him the best. However, I didn’t grant myself the same clemency. HIS assault towards ME became less about HIM and the implications of HIS actions and more about the implications of my inaction in that moment. I faced the repercussions for the actions of another, so the real question becomes: how can I in this situation be classified as a bad person? In reality, only I assigned myself this designation.
I will never forget what my father told me that day after the incident. In utter disbelief about what transpired, he said, “Gwosè valiz sa a ou genyen an, pouki sa w pat frappe l ave l!” This loosely translates to, “Your bag is so big, why didn’t you hit him with it!?!” I keeled over in a gut-clenching fit of laughter for the first time that day. Unbeknownst to him, this phrase now encompasses how I maneuver through life. It has become a motto of mine that reminds me to combat adversity head-on. Although this looks different for everyone, to me it means speaking out about my experience and this essay works as a means for me to do just that. After six years, I finally garnered the courage to publicly relay my story. When I previously spoke out, it was against my will because my body language betrayed me, but now I do so out of my own volition: to reclaim my story and purpose. I’m not the same 12-year-old little girl anymore, I’m grown. And although I may not have all the answers, what I do know now is that the protection of Black people and women is not mutually exclusive. Protecting predators poses a threat to both groups and my obligation lies in the security of said groups. So, I hoist up my hefty backpack once again, this time, ready to take on the world and see what it has to offer. And if any obstacle arises along the way, I will not hesitate to hit it over the head with my bag.
Bryant, Brittany E., Ayana Jordan, and Uraina S. Clark. “Race as a Social Construct in Psychiatry Research and Practice.” JAMA Psychiatry 79, no. 2 (February 1, 2022): 93–94. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2877.
Holmes, Charles. “Megan Thee Stallion on Tory Lanez: ‘He Shot Me. I Tried to Spare Him.’” Rolling Stone (blog), August 21, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/megan-thee-stallion-tory-lanez-he-shot-me-1047786/.
Hooks, Bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. Accessed April 15, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Tonry, Michael. “The Social, Psychological, and Political Causes of Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System.” Crime and Justice 39 (January 1, 2010): 273–312. https://doi.org/10.1086/653045.
Weller, Chris, and Yutong Yuan. “12 Inspiring Quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.” Business Insider. Accessed April 15, 2022. https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1.
1. bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 9, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bu/detail.action?docID=1813143.
2. Charles Holmes, “Megan Thee Stallion on Tory Lanez: ‘He Shot Me. I Tried to Spare Him,’” Rolling Stone (blog), August 21, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/megan-thee-stallion-tory-lanez-he-shot-me-1047786/.
3. Michael Tonry, “The Social, Psychological, and Political Causes of Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System,” Crime and Justice 39, (January 1, 2010): 273. https://doi.org/10.1086/653045.
4. Brittany E. Bryant, Ayana Jordan, and Uraina S. Clark, “Race as a Social Construct in Psychiatry Research and Practice,” JAMA Psychiatry 79, no. 2 (February 1, 2022): 93, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2877.
5. Chris Weller, Yutong Yuan, “12 Inspiring Quotes from Martin Luther King Jr,” Business Insider, accessed April 15, 2022, https://www.businessinsider.com/inspiring-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-2017-1.
At the intersection of medicine, ethics, and literature exists a practice known as narrative medicine—an approach which stresses the humanization of patients and the subsequent care that follows attentively tuning into the stories of those grappling with illness and death. Dr. Rita Charon, an internist and literary scholar Continue reading
Open year-round, the open-air “Moskva” pool was oblivious to the infamous Russian winter. The heated water, especially during snowfall, sent up waves of steam. Snow fell on the diving platforms, the pool ropes, and the brightly colored caps of the swimmers; some would have snowball fights with the still melting snow. My mother recalled how strange it was to experience the disassociation between the warm pool and the frigid outside, heightened as pedestrians dressed in fur coats and winter boots rushed past. But in fact, this pool had once been a magnificent, massive church whose empty foundation had been repurposed. Continue reading