In March 2023, I traveled to Paris, where human and animal feces smeared the streets.
PARIS WAS BURNING.
I didn’t take the time to comprehend why trash was piling up and stinking up the City of Lights and “love,” but I did enjoy the chaos it inflicted on a place that I found remained committed to anti-Blackness. Seeing the French navigate their precious city, now losing in a coup d’état to 10-foot-high piles of waste, was healing for me. The irony was that I’d inherited so much trash from the French, and they could not reconcile their own shit for months.
I WAS PLEASED.
See, I was born in a city within a country within a continent that had been divided, exploited, and left for dead by colonizers from France, England, Portugal, Italy, and Germany. I was born into a white man’s wet dream that did not offer me gold, timber, or ivory from the land of my ancestors, but instead tossed me white supremacy, capitalism, elitism, and environmental degradation as a value system. The colonizers left their subjects the worst type of inheritance: inferiority. The colonial project created laws, policies, cultural norms, and hierarchies that told us being Black, poor, “ugly,” uneducated, and queer were reasons for our exploitation and denigration. And today, most of us from these colonized lands still believe in this trash - that being Black, poor, “ugly,” uneducated, and queer is to be reversed with bleaching creams, college degrees, plastic surgery, weight loss, and Jesus.
NOW, CAN WE WAKE UP FROM THE WET DREAM?
In this piece, I break down the trash mindsets, complexes, habits, ideologies, concepts, perspectives, and words I/we have inherited from white colonial settlers globally. I want to share my ongoing journey to decolonization, framing my mind and body as primary sites for healing. I use a “database” of physical objects as personifications of larger colonial contradictions that my mind and body engage with daily - like adoring the artistry of Beyoncé while becoming repulsed by, with, and for the insatiability of Black capitalism.
I argue that, as a result of being born into a system of white supremacy, it is our everlasting work to accept ourselves - spirits and bodies - as more than sites for transformation into the image of the colonizer. I want this piece to serve as a reminder that we are more than money, light skin, designer clothing, thin waists, and degrees from racist institutions of higher “learning.” We’re spirits, and we’re healing from generations of colonization, but perhaps the first step is recognizing that this trash was never ours to begin with.
THE WORK IS CLEANING THE DIRT OFF THE GOLD.
Object 01 / 10
Kodak photograph of my family in Côte d’Ivoire (1991)
Category of trash
MENTAL INFERIORITY
This is not trash; this is my last photo in Côte d’Ivoire before we moved to Maryland.
It was taken about 30 years after independence from the French, at the Félix Houphouët-Boigny International Airport. I start here because the mentality behind our departure is rooted in this photo and the inferiority complex that colors it.
We couldn’t stay where we were born because it felt empty—no money, no education, no goodness. All those things seemed to be in places filled with whites who didn’t want us there. Nonetheless, we felt compelled to chase after all the good stuff. We joined the millions of Africans who left the continent in 1991, working at Holiday Inn, relying on food stamps, and navigating new versions of racism, colorism, and xenophobia.
But it would all be worth it because, in America, money was God. And God is good!
Warning
THIS TRASH MAY BLUR YOUR SENSE OF HOME.
Object 03 / 10
American passport (2018)
Category of trash
CAPITALISM / CONSUMERISM, MENTAL INFERIORITY
It took me over 15 years to hold a blue passport—a good passport.
When I finally got it, the days of fighting with various American institutions for access or protection were gone, along with the series of embarrassing social events that come with a queer immigration status. The blue passport marked me as good enough to move through the world without being policed by visas, cartes de séjour, and various pieces of white paper.
With a green passport, I was an Ivorian—a person from a developing, third-world, or shit-hole country. No one wants people like us in their clean, white cities, stealing all their social securities and selling our bodies. A green passport meant you arrived somewhere to take, steal, and exploit; a blue passport meant you had proven yourself safe, smart, and upstanding enough to contribute. So, welcome to the other side.
Warning
THIS TRASH MAY CAUSE A FALSE PROMISE OF FREEDOM.
Object 08 / 10
ASOS shirt, Staud skirt, and H&M dress (2020)
Category of trash
CAPITALISM / CONSUMERISM
To always look the part, trash has become available to order in unlimited styles and fast fabrics: shiny, flammable, knitted, and even plastic/vegan trash.
Labeled as convenient outlets for finding luxury styles for ‘less,’ this trash is addictive, manipulative, and duplicative.
It fosters a dangerous delusion—the belief that we need more clothing for every occasion: parties, funerals, weddings, dates, interviews, presentations, baby showers, vacations, beach days, putt-putt golf tournaments, and the Houston rodeos. Maybe we need to care a little less and IG and Tik Tok, and lean into exercises in socialism and sustainability, like thrift stores, clothing swaps, and wearing the clothing we already have.
Warning
THIS TRASH MAY UNRAVEL YOUR CONNECTION WITH MOTHER EARTH.
