Taller Electric Marronage Analysis Essay Example

Dr. Savannah Shange the author of “Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Anti-Blackness, and Schooling in San Francisco” is being interviewed on her book on the podcast Taller Electric Marronage."Shange is a Black queer feminist scholar who obtained her Ph.D. in African Studies and Education from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert on multiracial coalitions, ethnographic ethics, and progressivism. Episode one "Abolition as Black Feminist Method" discusses the provocative idea of stealing back freedom, joy, and blackness in the school system of San Francisco through points of resistance and disruption by black and Brown students. 

Theft is the intentional act of stealing goods or property. Most people oppose thievery; however, Dr. Savannah Shange does not; in fact, she encourages it. To Shange stealing encompasses so much more than just property and goods. Shange expresses that “existing is stealing, “… stealing yourself is the nature of running away, right? And so, for me, there’s that maxim “property is theft.” theft is so much more than just the act of stealing someone’s property but stealing yourself back is also an act of stealing. She feels it is vital that “We steal our own time, we steal love, we steal intimacy, we steal fucking dignity”. As black and brown people we have to liberate ourselves by stealing back our right to possess our black bodies and to display our blackness in a public setting such as school. 

In the podcast, she is explaining that black people are living in a new era of slavery where the plantation is no longer a vast body of land that circulates the big house but instead the schoolhouse. Students are forced into these environments where their blackness is not welcomed and therefore needs to be corrected when displayed. Black students’ dialect, clothing, and hairstyles are continuously policed in educational settings, but rather than allowing the system to overly police their blackness they show resistance through backtalk or lounging in the hallways. Being willfully defiant or disruptive in an academic environment as a student is in itself a major issue especially in the state of California because it is a direct violation of California penal codes. That being said this is direct defiance toward the state. However, for these students, it is a moment of peace where you can take control of your own mental and physical state. 

Shange is incredibly audacious in encouraging willful disobedience as a means of reclaiming blackness, and even going so far as to equate it to theft and to urge us to "embrace criminality." Just like the podcast displays the importance of defiance and stealing back your freedom so does Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”. Audre Lorde believes that “Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within. In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial”.  It is vital to take into account how both works of literature push the importance of staying true to ourselves and not allowing the oppressor to constrict us to fit societal views. In being willfully defiant you intentionally take back your joy, your freedom, and even your erotic. 

Additionally, Dr. Shange's conversation with the members of the Taller Electric Marronage podcast was both enlightening and overwhelming for me. As a black girl who has rarely ever received disciplinary measures in an educational environment, it was overwhelming to think that this place where I was able to mature both mentally and emotionally could be compared to a slave plantation or a place of oppression. I understand that school can be a militaristic environment, but I always thought that everyone was held to the same standards and not just a place where black students are oppressed. Therefore, I was concerned to hear Dr. Shange compare school to a slave plantation because I have never felt restricted in expressing myself as a black person in my academic environments. As a result, I became concerned that maybe I am not in an agreeance because I have blindly succumbed to the oppressor’s ideologies. What if I am a white-washed or a traitor to the black community because I have difficulty understanding or agreeing with Shange’s views of the school system being a slave plantation.