Gender and Race Matters: Interview with Hari Ziyad
Hari Ziyad is a graduate of Tisch’s Film and Television program at NYU and is a writer, content creator and blogger with a passion for gender/queer/race issues. His work has appeared on BlackGirlDangerous.org, YoungColoredAndAngry.com and DoingMoor.com, and he runs the blog RaceBaitR.com. He also works at a talent management company in New York City.
PHILLIP: THANKS HARI, FOR TALKING WITH ME TODAY. I’M EXCITED TO HAVE YOU HERE. I WANT TO GET INTO THE GENESIS OF YOUR BUDDING CAREER AND TALK ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE AS A STUDENT AT NYU. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? YOU WERE IN A MAJOR CITY STUDYING FILM AND TELEVISION. WERE YOU OVERWHELMED EVER? DID YOU HAVE A COMMUNITY?
Hari: I was perhaps much more overwhelmed than I was able to understand at the time. Coming to New York from another major city wasn’t all that frightening at first, and I knew at once that I would be able to “handle” the experience, but I didn’t know what “handling” it would actually entail. Being born into a family as big and diverse as mine (I have 18 brothers and sisters between my Hare Krsna mother and Muslim father) prepared me for a lot of things and in many ways that made the transition much more seamless. I was very accepting of new adventures — but, on the flip side, I didn’t really have the maturity to handle them in the healthiest way.
That led to, I think, a lot of periods of forcing my way into communities that turned out to be unhealthy for me, or allowing people in my life who weren’t really committed to making it better. I suppose that brings me to what you refer to as my “budding career” hahaha. I’m not really sure what that career will end up looking like when it fully blossoms yet but it is shaped by the need to find and cultivate healthy communities that allow me to grow.
P: AFTER YOU GRADUATED FROM NYU, WHERE DID YOU IMMEDIATELY FIND YOURSELF?
H: Mentally and emotionally? I was nowhere near where I was when I started and though I expected growth and a change in my outlook, I really was not prepared for just how drastic that could be.
The place I found myself was defined by, paradoxically, feeling deeply lost but also feeling very whole, or at least more whole than I had ever felt before. Everything I thought I knew and who I thought I was had now gone or had been seriously challenged and it led to something of an identity crisis. At the same time, I had never felt more like I was in my own skin.
I guess I didn’t find myself anywhere at all after I graduated. I did, though, find that I was searching for myself and where I belonged and was able to recognize the journey that I was on in a way I had never been able to before.
P: HOW HAS THAT SEARCH FOR SELF INFORMED YOU AS A WRITER? I AM THINKING IN PARTICULAR OF THE PIECES YOU’VE WRITTEN FOR BLACK GIRL DANGEROUS AND DOINGMOOR, ARTICLES WHICH CAN BE FOUND AT YOUR NEWER PROJECT RACEBAITR, WHICH WE’LL GET TO LATER.
H: I go into everything that I write with the hopes that I will discover more about who I am in relation to the world. I didn’t initially begin writing to share with other people or to change minds. That’s not completely true — I wrote to change my mind, I guess, or at least to make sense of it.
Making sense of my mind, which I find terribly odd at times, I found to be exponentially more feasible when sharing it with the people who shape and influence it and who are shaped and influenced by it — my communities. When I started sharing my thoughts, I’d learn so much more about myself from the people who responded to them, and that feeling of belonging that I’d never really known and had just began to recognize I needed would get stronger and stronger. So that search for self has entirely informed my writing. It is my writing.
P: IT SEEMS THAT SOME OF THE BEST WRITING COMES FROM THE EXPLORATION OF A QUESTION AS OPPOSED TO ALREADY HAVING, OR THINKING ONE HAS, AN ANSWER AND PUSHING THROUGH WHAT IS ASSUMED TO BE ALREADY KNOWN. SO IT’S NO SURPRISE THAT YOUR WRITING HAS GARNERED SO MUCH ATTENTION. I WANT TO DIG DEEPER INTO SPECIFIC PIECES. YOUR ARTICLE “CHOOSING BLACK LOVE[…]” GOT AN AMAZING RESPONSE FROM READERS. YOU SAID IN THAT PIECE, SPEAKING ON THE FAILED ATTEMPTS OF FINDING A WHITE PARTNER:
“AFTER MANY FAILED PURSUITS, I BEGAN TO FEEL AGAIN THAT I WAS UNWORTHY OF LOVE, A BELIEF THAT I HAD PREVIOUSLY LEARNED FROM A HOUSEHOLD AND CHILDHOOD ENVIRONMENT THAT WAS NOT ACCEPTING OF MY QUEERNESS. BUT IT WASN’T THAT I WAS UNWORTHY, IT WAS THAT WHITE SUPREMACY AND THOSE WHO OPERATE WITHIN IT NECESSARILY CANNOT LOVE BLACKNESS. IT WAS THAT I WAS OPERATING WITHIN IT AS WELL, AND COULD NOT FULLY LOVE THE VIBRANT BLACK COMMUNITIES AND OTHER COMMUNITIES OF COLOR THAT I HAD NEVER NOTICED WERE AROUND ME BECAUSE I WASN’T LOOKING.”
THERE ARE TWO THINGS WORKING IN THIS EXCERPT.
- THE IDEA THAT A HOUSEHOLD AND CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCE CAN FORM PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR THAT AFFECT ADULTHOOD DECISIONS.
- THE INVISIBILITY OF COMMUNITIES OF COLOR IS SYMPTOMATIC OF HAVING INVESTED IN WHITE SUPREMACY, SUCH THAT ONE CAN CALL IT CONTAGIOUS.
P: CAN YOU SPEAK A LITTLE (OR A LOT) ABOUT THIS BALANCE BETWEEN SELF LOVE AS IT RELATES TO PATTERNS SET BY YOUR CHILDHOOD AND WHAT YOU LATER DISCOVERED WAS YOUR OPERATION WITHIN WHITE SUPREMACY? HOW DID ONE STRENGTHEN THE OTHER?
H: I spoke earlier about how I came from a very large and diverse family and how that opened my eyes to a lot of experiences and perspectives. At the same time, my parents were extremely conservative on issues of sexuality and gender, so as a queer child growing up, I never really knew what it felt like to be loved entirely — for every part of me to be appreciated and supported.
“Because of this, I also couldn’t give myself a complete and healthy love.”
I had not come to the understanding that every part of me was lovable. I was willing to deny a part of me, something as integral as my Blackness, in order to feel wanted, because I had denied something as integral as my queerness my whole life.
I think at some point a lot of us queer people from unaccepting families give up on the idea that who we are — all of who we are — is worthy of love. Once we’ve given up a part of who we are to be accepted by someone else, I think it’s only natural that we be willing to give up another, especially when we’ve already invested in a system that says the part is ugly or dirty.
P: THIS SEEMS TO SOMEHOW RELATE TO YOUR ARTICLE “TONI MORRISON, THE ANTI-INTELLECT BLOG, AND WHY I’M DONE WITH ALLIES OF BLACK WOMEN.” YOU DESCRIBE AN UNFORTUNATE INTERACTION OF BEING SILENCED AFTER DISAGREEING WITH THE BLOG OWNER AND GARNERING MORE SUPPORT FOR YOUR IDEAS THAN HE DID FOR HIS OWN. HIS ERASING YOUR WORDS AND BLOCKING YOU FROM HIS PAGE LED YOU TO THIS UNDERSTANDING:
“There is a dull pain in being silenced, a pain that, as a Black person, I am accustomed to in most everyday interactions, but as a Black male in Black spaces I have had the privilege to overlook. Black Women do not have this privilege, and for a moment, I believe I came a little closer to understanding what that must feel like – to be silenced in what is supposed to be your community too.”
There seems to be a direct correlation with people not seeing themselves as part of communities that so often they want to lead or in which they wish to have a prevailing voice. In that discrepancy condescension, insecurities, and even outright attacks can occur between the “leader” and the “follower”. But that too, hierarchy, is part of the problem. In what ways does White Supremacy feed into a silencing of others intracommunally and does Black men specifically silencing Black women stem from this as well?
H: I’m wary of making a direct correlation between White Supremacy and the misogynoir that is demonstrated by Black men because I know that there are a number of unique factors in play for both, but it’s clear that White Supremacy is reliant on and works to perpetuate Black male misogynoir and that they are very connected.
When you have a community that is splintered by intersectional oppressions and you are able to create a hierarchy within it, it is much easier to keep them oppressed. Black men, specifically able cisgender heterosexual Black men are so invested in the illusion of power that they are able to maintain by further oppressing Black people who are disabled/trans/queer/women. But there is no real power here.
“At the end of the day, we’re all Black. In the face of white supremacy, we all lose together.”
And so here too I think in this particular situation is another example of how giving up a part of who you are in order to be accepted can be dangerous, except in this case it is an interpersonal sacrifice rather than intra. A lot of times I see Black men willing to sacrifice the parts we have been taught are the ugliest and dirtiest of our community — the queer and trans and disabled and women in our community — for some small semblance of power in a system that still oppresses us as a whole community.
P: IN RECENT EVENTS, BALTIMORE HAS BEEN EXPERIENCING WHAT SOME HAVE CALLED RIOTS AND OTHERS HAVE CALLED A REVOLUTION OVER THE DEATH OF FREDDIE GRAY. CAN YOU SPEAK ON THE EVENTS AS YOU SEE THEM? WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR OPINION?
H: What I’m seeing is Sanford, Ferguson, the Rodney King and MLK assassination revolts of generations past, and every uprising of Black people since we were brought to this country against our will. It is a protracted attempt at revolution, which, at its most hopeless of times, always and necessarily expresses itself with at least some element of violence that the media likes to refer to as “rioting”, which has the effect of stripping it of its morality. But though we can debate on how productive violent unrest may or may not be, it is not up for debate that rage in the face of over 400 years of disregarding of Black lives comes from a place of righteousness.
One of my first ideas for my site RaceBaitR was to explain words and terms that might come up as Black people and people with intersectional identities are on this search for themselves and their community. Generally, I do not know which word I am going to post about and some days I don’t post a word at all. The words I choose are usually inspired by the conversations with friends or by current events.
My latest post is about the word “revolt”. I felt that with the uprising in Baltimore we were being force fed this line that what we were seeing was simply a riot and I wanted to give a reminder that it is righteous rage being expressed there, because I felt many had lost sight of that fact.
“In the Hare Krsna religion, one of the core principles is that it is the obligation of a religious person to fight for what is right. This is called “Dharma”, loosely translated to mean “duty”.”
I’d like to think that those who are rising up in Baltimore are really just trying to follow their Dharma in the best way that they know. We can’t all be politicians, philosophers or educators and we don’t all have time to wait for a change that seems to never come. It’s just one expression of fighting for what is right (one that the media chooses to focus on rather than more nonviolent expressions that are always happening simultaneously), but weighted by desperation. Revolt is an inescapable reality when white supremacy and the state it sanctions to abuse Black men and women has not changed much if at all, and when the most vulnerable of our communities don’t have much to lose.
P: WHAT IS RACEBAITR? HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA?
H: If my writing is my search for self, RaceBaitR is something like my search engine. I wanted to create a space where all the questions I have about my identity and my communities can be fleshed out and journeyed toward. I hope it is a place where my communities can ask these questions as well, not just of me, but of themselves and each other.
I came up with the idea because I found that I was asking a lot of different things in a lot of different spaces (spaces for Black people vs. places for queer people, for instance) but they were all connected. RaceBaitR is, at its core, an exploration of my intersectional identities and how they layer, connect and even smash into one another. I wanted a place where these things can all happen together, and to connect with a community that allows and supports them in doing that.
I don’t know where this will lead me but I feel myself coming closer to finding out every day as more and more people join and guide me. I can’t wait to see where I end up, but I have a feeling when I get there I’ll have somewhere else to go.
P: WHAT’S NEXT ON THE HORIZON FOR YOU? WHAT ARE SOME OTHER PROJECTS THAT YOU’RE CURRENTLY WORKING ON AND SOME THAT YOU FORESEE IN THE FUTURE?
H: Though I love to write, my passion has always been communicating through film. It is what I went to school for and video is my favorite way of telling stories. I’m currently working on some video projects for RaceBaitR that may end up becoming a web series and I’m so excited for them!
I’m also working on a feature length screenplay that deals with the failures of our modern conception of meritocracy, and I am exploring once again visual art. I designed the RaceBaitR logo and I hope to also examine race and intersectionality through painting and drawing.
I plan to collaborate with more artists and creators with a similar passion for race and intersectionality soon as well. There are some absolutely phenomenal people on my radar whom I can’t wait to work with!
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