Sally Strange on Nostr: Last Boost: Nina is right. Listen to Nina. I used to get confused by Audre Lorde's ...
Last Boost: Nina is right. Listen to Nina.
I used to get confused by Audre Lorde's famous quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Being a literal-minded child, I imagined people taking up the tools they use to build things for their masters--hammers, saws, chisels, etc.--it would be quite easy to dismantle a house with those tools.
Then I read "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist. His detailed descriptions of the new technologies invented by slavers to break people and keep them broken made me realize that "the master's tools" were not hammers and saws but rather the whip, the coffle, the police, the laws making aiding escapees a crime, etc.
Loyalty to the state is a master's tool. Punishing "traitors" is a master's tool. Making "sedition" illegal is a master's tool.
I used to get confused by Audre Lorde's famous quote, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Being a literal-minded child, I imagined people taking up the tools they use to build things for their masters--hammers, saws, chisels, etc.--it would be quite easy to dismantle a house with those tools.
Then I read "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist. His detailed descriptions of the new technologies invented by slavers to break people and keep them broken made me realize that "the master's tools" were not hammers and saws but rather the whip, the coffle, the police, the laws making aiding escapees a crime, etc.
Loyalty to the state is a master's tool. Punishing "traitors" is a master's tool. Making "sedition" illegal is a master's tool.