Misbehaving at the Crossroads Quotes

“Ever since the campaign of businessman Donald Trump began in 2015, I had tried to ignore what was happening. Mentally, as things got worse, I clung faithfully to the previous picture of Barack Obama and his family. I tried to accept the illogical logic of America, the logic telling me that despite all that I’d read in the historical archives, things had changed for the better; that the presidential administration of Donald Trump was a hiccup.

After all, I’d believed that the election of Barack Obama in 2008 would change five centuries of American history. And so had my mother. And so had so many other African Americans. I’d believed in that change in his first term.

My letting go of the fantasy was gradual. Bits and pieces of trust died off, and after January 6, 2021, my fantasy was completely dead.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings – A Personal and Historical Exploration of Black Women's Journeys Through Intersectionality

“The document that heralded our national revolution, the Declaration of Independence, was penned by Thomas Jefferson. Within that text, he did not cover any Indigenous peoples, or White women, or Black folks with the grace of liberty.

Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Yet the presence of that “we” that held “these truths to be self-evident” in those words that are considered sacred spoke an absence: Non-White, non-male people didn’t establish this nation. They merely lived here.

I won’t descend into tortured explanations for Jefferson’s wording. (I will leave that to his apologists.) He was who he was—a rich man who would own approximately six hundred enslaved African Americans during his lifetime—and he wrote what he wrote: All men are created equal. Jefferson meant White men, not Indigenous men and not Black men—despite the fact that Crispus Attucks, an Afro-Indigenous man, was the first to fall in the Boston Massacre in 1770, an essential lead-up to the Revolution. “Men” did not include women, either, of any cultural background. Jefferson’s purpose in the Declaration was to establish White men as ultimate fathers, second only to God. White men as the authors of the limbs and blood and lineage of this nation. Jefferson didn’t need to state his purpose—his purpose is implied.

This was the brand of patriarchy created in this nation. Though patriarchy surely existed around the globe, our United States’ brand of that system was never meant to include—or benefit—anyone else but White, straight, cisgender men. The laws and practices of this country placed those men on the top of nation’s hierarchy.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings – A Personal and Historical Exploration of Black Women's Journeys Through Intersectionality

“Whatever our original ancestors—African, Italian, Asian, Indigenous, Latinx—our last name is American. In this country’s dining room, a long table, reaching across thousands of miles, is set for millions of people, made kin by the title of “American.” At the head of this table is our president, who with one exception has always been a White man. All this is brought forth when we speak of a nation.

But what happens when, instead of that meal on that three-thousand-mile-long table—that sustenance, that food for the citizens—many plates remain empty? Or even when those plates are picked up and smashed on the floor? Even for those who carry “American” in their identity? When some of the citizens who sit down at the table—say, we Black citizens—are dragged away from that table by others, usually by White men, because Father is the head of our national family? We must bow to his will.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings – A Personal and Historical Exploration of Black Women's Journeys Through Intersectionality

“But what is family, here in this now-America?

We are supposed to be a national marshaling of 350 million kindred, “from sea to shining sea.” Our nation is supposed to be our home—and to speak about home is to speak about the interior of where you live. A bedroom with a place to hold your weariness, to wrap you in clean sheets and a blanket. A kitchen where sustenance bubbles in a pot, fragrant and eventually delicious. A cup, a plate, a glass, a fork, blunt knife, and spoon on a table. An inviting meal.

An image of home is coziness. Domestic bliss. A protective roof and rooms conjured in the mind of the receiver: “Home is where the heart is.”
― Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings – A Personal and Historical Exploration of Black Women's Journeys Through Intersectionality