Thoughts on ‘Raising’ Resistance: Parenting in the Midst of Crisis
by Stephane Dunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
This time of year, I admit, I start thinking about fathers and parenting and the joys and struggles of raising my child. A lot of it has to do I'm sure with the fact that stores and commercial and unasked for sales ads in the mail bombard me with the silly suggestion that I need to remember my father and my son's, and buy him a razor or old spice or some golf balls because its Father's Day. And I know it’s because my father, both the biological one and the one whose name I bear and whom I loved as Daddy, are both dead, and each in their absences and presences while growing up inevitably shaped me in specific ways.
There are many days out of a year that I think of them quite honestly. But this year I am thinking of another father too, Emad, a resisting Palestinian filmmaker whose critically acclaimed film, Five Broken Cameras(with Guy Davidi) shares the story about the nonviolent resistance of a village against both the concrete and wire walls that the Israeli government builds and continues to build on their land. The filmmaker father and his collaborator frame the story of a village's lengthy struggle through the father's narration of both the life of five cameras—as they are broken during their attempts to record the truth of their ongoing struggle—and his youngest son Gibreel's transition from baby to toddler to little boy. What's most striking is the father's and the mother's stunning, brave choice, to allow the boys, including Gibreel, to witness the nonviolent fight against the wall and all of its bloody consequences.
The father's voice narrates throughout – sometimes meditative about his fears for the boys in the midst of his resolute choice to groom them with the reality of the life and death costs of their resistance, and the conviction that it is necessary despite these costs. Their uncles and neighbors are arrested for nonviolently trying to protest the wall and some are wounded and are killed as the young boy witnesses. Even his father, before the eye of the camera and the eyes of the little boy, is critically injured. I am struck raw by his choice—both for himself to keep filming and his choice for his children to let them watch—to teach them so early about the necessity of their resistance in the face of terrible odds and costs.
I think that one of my greatest impulses as a mother has been to protect my son. His first three years have certainly been, in part, punctuated by the sound of my voice, bidding him to 'be careful', 'to watch his head,' to not run too fast, and to 'STOP'. His father, my partner, is protective too but he has also been more willing to let him wander, possibly, into a little bit of danger and the possibility of learning the difficult or hard way.
My father too, a brilliant, multi-talented, funny, alcoholic, taught me too, inadvertently, that childhood innocence is neither a given or indefinite, and in the end my survival in the midst of violence and confusing disruptions taught me and shaped me as much as the laughter and fine experiences that we shared.
Emad Burnat sees that his children will not come away unscathed if they are not on the front lines; they will not be safe in the homes where soldiers can evict or bulldoze them at a moment's notice or arrest sons no matter how young, for such offenses as charges of throwing rocks at soldiers. Emad and his wife's weary, stunning choice to critically wean their sons on the necessity of unrelenting resistance puts me on notice as a human being and a mother that a choice is necessary. I am reminded of something—resistance to oppression is part of my ancestral legacy.
And in making the choice to resist the ignorance about the truth and the silence on the immoral complicity of myself and the US in the oppression of Palestinian mothers, children, and fathers—no matter how seductive—I am making a choice to arm my son with this knowledge early, and to do so unrelentingly and unapologetically.
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Stephane Dunn, PhD is a writer and Co-Director of the Film, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program at Morehouse College. She is the author of the 2008 book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas : Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois Press), which explores the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in the Black Power and feminist influenced explosion of black action films in the early 1970s, including, Sweetback Sweetback’s Baad Assssss Song, Cleopatra Jones, and Foxy Brown. Her writings have appeared in Ms., The Chronicle of Higher Education, TheRoot.com, AJC, CNN.com, and Best African American Essays, among others. Her most recent work includes articles about contemporary black film representation and Tyler Perry films.
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